Canadian Wedding
by Von Uriken
Summary: Kim has her life turned unexpectedly upside down by Shego, and tries her best to keep her head above water. Kigo
1. Boreal

**A/N:** Edits done 11-13-11. Made the ending just a bit less cliched, fixed a few spelling mistakes, didn't do much else to it. For the next week though, I'll be doing a bit of a special. I need replies to a survey for a college English class. The link is on my profile, and the survey doesn't take a whole lot of time, a friend said it took about three minutes. It's also confidential. In return for your help, I'll be updating my stories. I've already updated one of them, and Canadian Wedding is next on the docket. So, fill out a survey and check in over the next few days and weeks for updates to various stories like Big Bad Wolf, The Night is Lonely, Angel of the Dead, Lost in Space, and more. Thank you for your time, and enjoy the story. **~VLU**

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The pristine back roads of Canada were half the reason Doctor Drew Lipsky had built a hidden lair there, including, but not limited to, the beautiful scenery, the laxer laws, and of course, the multitudes of forests and national parks that protected it from view. The other half was the health care offered by the Canuck variation of Hench Company.

The health care wasn't the first thing on Kim Possible's mind as she parachuted down from the private jet of a wealthy New York socialite. From just beneath the clouds, she could see for miles in every direction, miles of untainted forest and lush evergreens, dotted by mountains and the occasional lake. It could have made a more introspective person forget to pull their ripcord, but it did bring a glimmer to Kim's eyes.

Having been doing things like this, parachuting down into a fight in any manner of locales, for years, Kim had forgotten what it was like not to be seeing new and amazing things every week. The safaris of South Africa, the exotic jungles of Tibet, one villain had gone so far once to build a lair inside the peak of Mount Everest. She'd never understood the lure of mountain climbing until she had stood on it's peak and stared down the vista it afforded.

Now she couldn't understand how people could stay cooped up in their homes or lairs, when views like the Boreal Forest lay beneath her. It was breathtaking, but the sudden tug of her ripcord was even more so.

With her ripcord pulled, the parachute unfurled above her, catching wind almost immediately. The sudden tug it gave her was enough to blow the air out of her lungs, shooting the gum she had just previously been chewing on far beneath her.

She could have cursed, watching the little pink blob fly through the air, if it was in her character to do so. Instead, she just watched it fall and pursed her lips, before narrowing her gaze to the closest peak beneath her.

It was actually rather like Drakken to build a lair like this, underneath the mountain, carving paths around the trees, instead of directly violating the forest. She had seen effects like this before, like in Kenya, where Drakken had purified a river he decided to build a lair beside, or even the coast of Indonesia, where he'd put up advanced earthquake warning systems to protect the land around his lair. Now, he was responsible for scaring off a wave of loggers looking to make the Boreal open to them, for which Kim was grateful.

But, as Drakken tended to go, he was also responsible for a large cannon that was sticking out of the upper reaches of the mountain peak, aiming south towards North America. He had claimed that it would create an eternal winter over New York. Then, confusingly, he'd cut off right before he could demand world power, and hadn't made a sound since.

Kim had been routed to investigate, tracking the source of the transmission to the lair located some twenty floors beneath the giant snow machine. Ron, who was still visible over her right shoulder, had been dispatched moments after her to deal with the threat of the cannon.

Unfortunately, he also seemed to have put his parachute on backwards, and was flailing about wildly in her vision as he approached the mountain, headfirst. His pants, crafty as they were, were floating softly to the ground just feet away from him, revealing the unflattering floral print boxers he wore.

Kim could only roll her eyes and smile at the display. Whoever was manning the cannon was going to get a big surprise- Scratch that, did just get a big surprise, as Ron landed back first on the complex aiming sight for the weapon, his front half dangling off, while the boxers slid further down his legs with every second.

It'd figure, you get a job for a blue loon, and on your first day manning his doomsday machine, a boy parachutes from the sky and moons you. Super high definition too.

_Okay, Possible, focus. Now's not the time to break down laughing, Shego's around here somewhere after all. And we do owe her a rematch._

Gliding down until she was just feet from the treetops, Kim pulled the clasp on her parachuting vest, letting it slide quickly off her shoulders before it could yank her arms. She had scanned the trees as she came in, looking for anything that would help her land, but seemed to have no such luck. Instead, all she had were the multitude of firs beneath her, soft to look at, but sharp as knives when you hit them fast enough.

She tried her best not to, tucking her body into a ball to take the majority of the sharp little needles to her clothed hands and legs. But, there wasn't anything else she could do really. She'd had to aim for the trees or risk falling the thirty feet below unhindered, breaking any number of bones.

Luckily, her first and only try was good enough. She fell the few feet to the tip of the tree she'd been aiming for, hitting the slick wood with little other resistance. She was lucky that it was slick too, instead of snapping off under her weight it bent forward, letting her get a better handle on it as she continued to fall.

With the slender trunk in her hands, she shifted her weight around, twisting along the trunk, and down into the wet green needles that surrounded the tree. The first of the branches along the trunk didn't hold under her gloves, letting her slide down before the tree could bend any further and cast her off. Within seconds she had slid a good few feet down, and the thicker branches that held through the center and towards the base began to fight against her gloves.

_Now or never_, she thought to herself, letting go of the tree. She had no fear of this, having fallen from far greater heights with less to work with before. The worst part was the smell, the thick pine scent that had already coated her gloves, and down into her hands. She was grateful that the gloves had kept out a majority of the whiplash, but the smell was only going to get worse.

Her plan was simple and easy to execute. With one hand, she kept her weight from driving to far from the tree, gripping whatever came into it. With the other, she protected her face, feeling the needles whip the thinner fabric of her arms and her exposed navel, as opposed to completely destroying her face. It stung, so bad that she felt worse than breaking a rib, but she worked with what she had.

The fall lasted only seconds, breaking a majority of the branches on one side of the tree, and ending up at the soft earth beneath it, raining a cloud of green needles. The entire half of the tree in her wake looked almost shaved, and half of her body was covered in green coloring surrounding thick red lashes.

Kim practically jumped to her feet, brushing the fir needles from her body and the dirt from her hair in one pass, and surveyed her surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary though, just a normal, if somewhat more beautiful, forest. And she'd made it to the ground without a broken bone or a clearing in sight, though the arm that had been holding her to the tree did feel slightly jarred.

_Nothing a little stretch won't fix_, she thought, trying to keep her spirits above the clouds with her sidekick otherwise occupied. Rummaging through her cargo pants' pockets, she produced the light blue Kimmunicator, which had been uploaded with a map and a rough layout of the base.

Checking the map, she could only smile and whisper to herself, "Jackpot." She'd managed to land just twenty feet from the service entrance that Wade had discovered and hacked. The little elevator, under the boy genius' command, would take her straight to the main lair.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the entrance, and only that long because she was still wary of outside traps. It stuck out too, a dingy little outhouse in the middle of nowhere. The outside was unassuming, for southern America a hundred years ago perhaps, just a wooden construction with a single door, and a little crescent shape in the center, complete with stereotypical slanted roof. Around it though, much of the needles had been cleaned away, and the dirt was surprisingly bare and dry.

Also sticking out was the keypad to the outhouse, which was sleek and modern. On the interface was a single toned light, just above the ten keys, glowing green as if someone had just punched in their code.

"What would I do without you, Wade?" She asked the sky, opening the door and stepping inside.

As she expected, the inside was not a outdoor restroom, but a stainless steel box. She was partially surprised that the elevator fit so snuggly too, seeing as how the top housed no room for a pulley system. Instead, the elevator started up by rattling at the bottom, where it felt like a series of wheels, like gears almost, were pulling her downward.

The automatic start wasn't what she was looking for, she'd expected some sort of interface. But Wade had assured her it'd take her directly to the center of the lair, and she could only trust her operator. The box had no handles, no buttons, and no exit, as the door seemed to only open from the outside. It descended slowly, blocking out the light from the crescent opening almost immediately, until her head was beneath the ground level.

Luckily for her, twenty floors beneath a mountain didn't equal to that far beneath ground. If she decided to guess, she'd go for three floors underground.

The slow little service elevator made it in just a few minutes, opening up behind her with a _ding_, which made her whirl around, expecting an ambush. There was just one problem, the lair was empty.

Not completely empty, though, just devoid of life. A couch sat across a moat of unidentifiable green liquid, with a single bridge between it and the television, which sat on the opposite side. It didn't seem to serve any real purpose though, as the moat cut off well before the next walls, and anybody entering through the broad tunnels could simply walk around it. It did have Drakken's particular style though, the glowing green floor surrounded by darker red walls and floors.

Curiously though, the control panel that operated a majority of the base's systems, sitting across from Kim and occupying an entire wall, was unmanned. According to a majority of her fights, Drakken should have been sitting there, watching the monitor and blabbing about his evil scheme.

Instead, another quick scan of the lair revealed Drakken's familiar blue coat, shaking in place behind the rather simplistic couch. Seconds later, a familiar mop of black hair appeared as the blue-skinned villain shifted to better conceal himself, disappearing from her view altogether.

Kim had ducked behind the first object she found, the widescreen television, the second she'd spotted the mad scientist. Either he was hiding because, for once, he wanted to get the jump on her personally, or something else was down her. Something that scared him enough to cower behind the cushions of the couch, rather than make some attempt to expel it from his base.

She was thankful for the fact that the elevator hadn't opened on his side of the room though. From what she could hear, the bubbling of the moat and whirring of machinery behind him had drowned out the sound of the elevator, both the tone it used when it let her out, and the doors opening and closing. All she had to do was take Drakken by surprise, and more often than not, simple was the way to go.

With her plan firmly in mind, Kim dashed out from behind the television, silently crossing the ground towards the couch. It took her only a single step to cross the moat's bridge, and just a few seconds total to make it all the way to the couch. With the grace of a cheerleader, she hit the couch almost too lightly to feel, feet pushing into the cushions, then the backrest, before she finally vaulted into the air.

After an impressive twist in midair, not only flipping once, but turning her entire body in the process, Kim landed facing her foe with a cocky smirk on her face. "Doctor Drakken, Global Justice got worried when you just hung up on them." She said with a undertone of sarcasm.

The face that turned to her wasn't one of shock and horror though. Drakken's expression betrayed his feelings of relief, eyes wide with hope. "Kim Possible!" He shouted all to happily. "You've arrived! Thank god, you have to get me out of here."

Kim could only eye him with a raised eyebrow. Drakken's tone was completely serious, and years of fighting the man proved that he wasn't the best liar. It was time to show him just how serious she was too. "Fess up, Drakken, what's going on here." Saying that, she slid into her normal fighting pose.

"I don't even know." He said, crawling towards her in a way that practically groveled. "I was just enacting my plan to rule the world, minding my own business, when Shego shows up out of nowhere and starts wrecking the place. She's unstable, you've got to protect me!" He pleaded. "I lost her in the hallways, but she's already wrecked the rest of the base."

Kim growled, ready to demand further explanation, when the tone from her kimmunicator cut her off. She paused to reach into her pocket, pulling it out without looking, while her eyes were still locked on the mad scientist at her feet.

"KP." Ron greeted her, his blond head appearing on the view.

"Ron?"

"Dude, you should check this out. The entire place up here is smashed, snow blower and all." He said, sounding more than amused.

"It's an Atmospheric Conditioner, not a snow blower." Drakken butted it sharply, switching from groveling to mad scientist without so much as a twitch.

"An AC? That's the best you can come up with?" Kim asked, before switching her attention back to the blonde head still bobbing across her kimmunicator. "What happened?"

The blond scratched his head contemplatively for a second. "I don't even know. All the technicians are still hiding under the rubble, or behind their desks. They keep asking me to arrest them."

Kim growled under her breath. "Shego?" Her only response was Ron nodding his head on the screen. "Okay. Ron, get the technicians to the rendezvous point, pick up Drakken from the service elevator on your way there."

He nodded, his expression the same jovial one that had helped him survive this far. "Okay, and what're you going to do, KP?"

"I'm going to find Shego and get to the bottom of this. You can come back to help after everyone's safe." She said, tone firm and leaving little room for question.

Ron just nodded again. "On it, KP." He said, before cutting off altogether.

She turned back to Drakken, still on his knees behind the couch. Without a word, she pointed at him, then up at the service elevator across from them.

He grudgingly nodded, rising to his feet and setting off across the lair. It took him a bit longer than it'd taken Kim, but it gave her time to dial out on the kimmunicator again.

"Wade?" She asked, giving it a second for the portly hacker's face to appear on the screen.

"Yeah, Kim?"

"I need the elevator I came down on delayed before it reaches the surface. Give it long enough for Ron to make it there, then let Drakken out, got it?" She ordered, though her attention was elsewhere the entire time. Her words were exact, but her eyes were scanning the entryways for Shego, refusing to let her guard drop.

"Already done. He won't be getting away this time." Wade said with his trademark smirk. As he signed off, he was already reaching to his side of the Big Gulp located near his keyboard, at which Kim could only smile. It seemed that no matter how long the boy helped them, he never really changed, in attitude or habits.

"Please and thank you." She said, shoving the kimmunicator back in her cargo pants. There were four corridors surrounding the room, all spidering out in different directions, but the one to the northwest seemed to call her. She could never explain how Shego and her fought so in sync, or even seemed to talk so in tune, but there was a connection there that ran under the surface. Her connection told her that Shego was up that hall. Either that, or the waves of heat that seemed to radiate out of it.

Still in mission mode, Kim stalked towards the corridor, rolling from the outside of her feet in, in a way that remained fast while minimizing sound. She was used to this, sneaking through villainous lairs, but now she was being overly cautious. If Shego did go on a rampage, or was going all out, there was little even she could do to stop her super powered rival.

The corridor was long and twisting, with only the floor correctly lined with firm metal sheets, while the walls were dark and aesthetically natural. Eventually it lead to another room, just as big as the last, though much taller, reaching several floors up. It looked like the inside of the peak had been hollowed out, with just enough rock and dirt outside to care for the trees, while the inside was lined with complex scaffolding webbing across the walls in every direction.

The ground floor, where she stood, looked to have been quite beautiful before Shego had gotten to it. Where a grand water fountain had once stood, now the crushed rock split off in every direction. Water pooled in several larger, green tinted, holes that cracked the granite floors like shale. Several deeper scars, both long and deep, were still filling up, keeping her from having to splash about on the slick floors.

Kim sensed, rather than heard or saw, her rival standing in one of the doorways to her right. The entire place was well-lit, looking more like a mall than a evil lair. Sure enough, when Kim turned to face Shego, she was leaning boastfully in the doorway of a hair and nail salon, which could have been open for how bright it was inside.

"Shego." Kim growled in greeting, still in her trademark fighting stance. "What's going on?"

Shego smiled, still looking proudly at her young rival. There was something immediately wrong with her that Kim noticed, from the slouched way she held herself to the oddly disoriented way her eyes danced around Kim. "What's going on?" She parroted, looking around curiously at the environment, which mostly consisted of the ruined villain-mall. "I-" She paused and chewed over her words. "I don't know. Stuff?"

Her words must have been hilarious to her, because as soon as she answered Shego started laughing breathlessly. A second later she moved a foot out to catch her balance and, looking rather surprised at the action she had performed, slipped, caving to the several seconds lying there seemed like a good idea given how dazed she looked. But eventually she put a hand to the back of her head. "Ow. Who- who the hell put that there?" Shego asked, her tone dancing randomly.

Kim didn't need to be told twice. "You're drunk?"

"Am not." She shot back as she wrestled with her feet to stand. "Jusht- just- had a few shots." To emphasize this, once she had taken to her wobbling legs once more, she squeezed her thumb and forefinger together. "Just a few. I mean- seriously- it takes me tons to get drunk. I'm still standing!"

Kim sighed and put a hand to her face, feeling very close to slapping herself. Sometimes it took knowing a person to know when they were drunk. This wasn't so much a lack of eloquence or physical stature, even if her rival was wobbling visibly still, this was a lack of control. Shego was always in control. But now she was, quite obviously, drunk, and Kim didn't see why Shego didn't understand that. "All this because you can't hold your alcohol? God, and everyone up there is throwing themselves to GJ just to get away from you." She said with a huff.

The drunk woman across from her growled. "Can't hold my alcohol? Bah! You'd be off your- off your-" She paused, eyes almost inverting as she tried desperately to think of the word. "Off your shoes! With how much I've had." This was finished by swallowing a hiccup. Kim just shook her head sadly.

"Shego, let's just go. There's a GJ transport waiting in a clearing just a bit from here. You'll feel better in the morning." She tried to reason with the woman.

Shego had to snort at that. Kim had to notice the sudden, drastic mood swing. Shego had gone from cocksure to angry, but now her eyes dropped to the ground and she heaved a silent, somber breath from deep in her chest. "Yeah, I'm sure." She desperately tried to sound sarcastic to that, and almost succeeded.

Kim tried her best to sound motherly though, "You've just had a little too much to drink, now come with me."

"Fine, what-" This, she emphasized with another well-timed and silenced hiccup. "Ever." Her rival began to walk towards her, a walk that was very much a drunken swagger. The swagger was only stopped when Shego was just feet from the redhead, who was honestly surprised that Shego was managing to stand upright so well. "Like I said," It came out as a purr, a slightly noxious purr given the range, "I could drink you- I could drink you even under the table now." Something about that sentence seemed wrong to Kim. "Not that you got the balls to try it, you goody-goody lightweight."

An eyebrow twitched at that response. Kim pursed her lips, and lowered her olive green gaze at the villain. "I am not a lightweight." She said, sounding extremely defensive for just a second.

Shego, for her part, smiled boldly once more, and tried to stand up straight. Kim, for her part, would never be able to remember what exactly happened next, or how she ended up where she did.


	2. Vancouver

**A/N:** Edit, 11-13-11. I first wrote this before I'd ever gotten drunk. Or maybe after, maybe I just didn't let the experience settle enough in me. Anyway, I changed some of Kim's memories to make them slightly more believable than a standard "let's have the character conveniently forget everything that happened for a day" cliche. Also, spelling fixes. Lots of them.

For anyone who's just tuning in, or ignored the first chapter's begging, I have to get a certain number of surveys for a college class I'm taking, and I need them rather quickly. Anyone kind enough to help out can go to my profile page, there's a link for the survey there, and be happy knowing with all the time I save not running around convincing everyone in town to help out, I'll be updating all my stories. Hurrah. Also, thanks for being considerate. **~VLU**

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

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Vancouver has often been thought to be the pinnacle of Canada, and a tourist hotspot because of it. Snow capped mountains lined the horizon on one side, while a beautiful beach nestled against the city from three other sides, both a wide lake, and a relaxing river.

Dotting the waterfront was a myriad of pubs, tourist-catering restaurants, and luxurious yachts or ferries. Just a bit off the waterfront was downtown, home of tall skyscrapers like any other booming city, catering to both business' and the elite.

Vancouver was indeed a place to see in Canada. Kim just wasn't expecting to see it when she woke up, nor was she expecting her head to be splitting in half, or at least feel that way, even before she opened her eyes. From what she had seen in the few seconds between opening them, and squeezing them shut as hard as she could, it was just now reaching dawn, and the room she was occupying was a wide, rounded one, where every wall was glass, each looking across the city in a different direction.

The bed was unfamiliar too, wide and gracious, with an assortment of luxurious and fluffy pillows and blankets, all sharing a similar dark theme. The one thing Kim did know, not being able to take much more of her surroundings in without killing herself, was that she needed to get up, and she needed to either occupy the bathroom for several minutes, or the find the nearest garbage can. Her stomach was moving oddly, one second spread across her ribs, one second invading her throat. As if she was splayed open on a boat.

She hardly even noticed the other figure in the bed as she flung herself out of it, the sensation just barely registered as the distinct feeling of her calf rubbing against skin. Practically flying to the nearest room, which was a similarly wide and extravagant bathroom, Kim quickly shut herself in and launched herself to the toilet, coming down head first. The sudden queasy sensation that had sprung up just by opening her eyes had come back tenfold when she stood, and her stomach was quick to expel a putrid mix of hard alcohol and what looked to be partially digested gum, both rank and disgusting just to taste.

She could feel her eyes squeezing shut from that as much and the sensations still pounding away at her head. She had heard, when she was younger, that hangovers weren't fun. But it was the first time she'd ever experienced something so painful without having been beaten in the head by a sledgehammer.

_Get a hold of yourself, Possible, it'll pass_. She told herself, trying her best to take in more of her surroundings as she took to the sink to wash the filth from her mouth. For one thing, she had already seen the horizon from the window, so she was in a penthouse higher than any of the other buildings around, far more luxurious than anything she'd ever been in too. The bathroom was well past the size of her room at home. Another thing was that she was currently dressed in panties, and a shirt that seemed to be just a size too big.

_What have you gotten yourself into, Possible?_ She asked, feeling the sudden tightening of her lungs that came with hyperventilation. This was not what she should be doing, not waking up in some stranger's penthouse, wearing some strange person's clothes.

All that came to mind when she thought of the previous night was Shego. Skydiving was a particularly fresh memory to her, but her memories faded much, much more after a certain point following that. She sort of remembered Shego's room, some sort of challenge. There was a taxi in there somewhere, what may or may not have been a bar, and a few more instances where she couldn't remember her rival, but she knew it was her. She could even remember standing outside the penthouse here, but she couldn't remember why she was there, or how she'd got there.

A silent, _What?_ popped up in her head as her body registered something. Running her hands quickly down her shirt, to smooth it out as much as feel the texture, she found something mysteriously caked at the bottom of it. Her fingers felt even lower too, and found the same substance caked along the hem of her panties, and even below that.

Her eyes could only widen further at that, breath drawing out in gasps both brief and short. The kicker was when she felt a ring get caught on the hem of her shirt though, holding snug to her ring finger.

Kim was almost to afraid to look down, but eventually she convinced herself to, and came face to face with the most horrifying thing she could ever dream of. A wedding band, a plain, sterling-silver, wedding band. It even had her name on the top.

_Yep, you're boned, Possible. I'll see you later._ Her inner wisdom informed her, before promptly leaving. She felt almost faint, but at the very least her breath was coming out in long, shaky, breaths instead of the short gasps of before.

Marriage. Somewhere in the dark points of her memory someone had the time to engrave a ring with her name on it and put it on her finger. The worst part of that, the absolute worst part, was that she knew, without a doubt, she had said yes. There was no memory of a ceremony, but there was a terrifying knowledge that it was true, and there was no escaping it.

There was just one more thing Kim needed to complete the puzzle, and it was perhaps the most frightening thing. Just who she had married last night.

The teen crept slowly towards the door, still barefoot, and still sporting a killer headache from her hangover. In her haste to make it to the bathroom, she'd forgotten to close the door behind her, and it lay just a hairsbreadth from the wall.

Like a frightened heroine from a horror movie, she pulled the door ever-so-slightly out, peering between it, and out at the bed that lay at the bottom of the lowered center floor. The entire thing was as posh as she'd originally guessed, even going so far as to have a big-screen attached to the roof near the window. Across from the bathroom was what appeared to be a hot-tub, complete with a mini bar. Everything was decorated rather barely too, except for the rounded bed that lay in the center, which had a completely different motif.

Unlike the light colors that complimented the rest of the room, the bed in the center was a mix of darker greens and black, with a single forest green blanket, and a mixture of black and green pillows. At the center, lying in panties and a shirt just a size or two too small, was Kim's worst nightmare.

Shego, complete with milky green skin, and the shirt that Kim wore beneath her mission wear. She seemed to be waking up, slowly but surely, and was scratching beneath the border of her own panties, around the frilled elastic, rather like what Kim had seen from men when they weren't around women.

Kim was standing in the doorway, still hidden, but her headache and stealth had been forgotten for a much greater task. She stood there, staring at her rival with her mouth open in shock, eyes wide and unblinking. The thoughts seemed to have completely left her head.

_I couldn't have. I didn't. That can't be her- on the bottom of my shirt, can it? No way. That can't be her shirt, can it? Why is that my shirt?_

The questions were building up in her head, but she couldn't seem to find it in her to answer any of them. They simply looped and distorted, asking any variation of 'how could this have happened' that she could find. In the end though, she was still staring at the half-naked figure lying on the bed she had gotten out of no more than ten minutes before. There were no other noises, no other figures, nothing else to even suggest that the two hadn't been alone all this time. Even the clothes littered about on the raised part of the floor, surrounding the dip that lead to the bed, were just hers and Shego's.

With the headache still splitting her thoughts from ear to ear, she couldn't even bring up the will to deny it either. There was just one more thing she needed to see. One more thing before she could tell herself this was all just a sham, or she really did mess up that bad.

Before she could so much as move the door to sneak through to the bed, though, Shego flipped over, throwing both hands to her head with a guttural groan. She sounded, and looked, far less than awake, but seeing Kim wasn't something the redhead wanted to risk when she had less than perfect control. The villain slowly began to shuffle out of bed, practically crawling on her hands and knees towards the bathroom, and towards Kim inside the bathroom.

Kim quickly backed up, further into the room, trying her best to ignore the aching in her head and the frightened puffs of her breath, just long enough to think of a plan. Unfortunately, the bathtub and shower, though they seemed to take up half the room, were covered by a frosted glass window instead of a more convenient, for hiding at least, shower curtain. It would be all too possible to see her, especially with a bright mop of red hair against beige walls.

Still, if Shego was feeling half as bad as Kim, that was a chance that she was willing to take. There was always the possibility that Shego wasn't a morning person, that she wouldn't even open her eyes as she did whatever she was coming this way to do.

Shego opened the door just seconds later, shuffling inside like the living dead. Though her eyes, half closed and fighting off her own hangover as they were, scanned the room, the open door barely managed to hide Kim's figure behind the frosted window. Much to her dismay, the shower wasn't as much of a tub as she thought it had been, and there was nowhere to lie low and wait. She was reduced to standing there, watching the distorted form of her rival as she went to the sink and began to brush her teeth, trying her best to stay out of range for the mirror that stood over the marble counters.

Kim, for all the times she'd fought off life and death situations unharmed, had never felt so scared in her life. Not of being found out, but of what she might find out. There was still the one greatest variable in her entire drunken night, which she could only twiddle unconsciously on her ring finger. Even as Shego finished brushing her teeth and moved to use the toilet, she feared catching the glint of metal across her finger too.

Finally, Shego finished, and washed her hands. She seemed about ready to leave the bathroom, when she suddenly froze in the process of drying her hands. Something seemed to click in her sleep and hangover addled mind. Something big, bright, and red, and located in her shower. She must have passed her eyes over that three times already, at least. And not once had she thought it was out of the ordinary.

There were just some things Shego couldn't accomplish without her three cups of coffee. But spotting a spy in her shower wasn't one of them.

She turned on her heel and walked, all too calmly, towards the shower doors, her emerald eyes staying firmly transfixed on the bright head of hair distorted through the shower glass. Kim froze in place, only managing a distorted and pained stare at the door as she got closer and closer.

Shego finally reached the door and pulled it to the side, looking inside to catch gazes with Kim. Kim ran her eyes up the villainess' body once, pausing only momentarily to memorize the distinct silver band around her finger, before finally coming up to rest on her face. The fear had turned to an odd void in emotions and thoughts, for several seconds, and the two just gazed at each other.

Finally, Kim realized that yes, she had indeed married her arch-foe. And yes, she was as boned as her wisened side had said she was. And finally, that light behind Shego was very bright, and piercing directly into her already feverish skull.

Shego hardly managed to blink before Kim threw up the last of her stomach contents, directly in her face.

Seconds after Kim had lost it in Shego's face, the fight had erupted. It had lasted just long enough for Shego to tear a hole across the glass shower wall, and Kim to dash around her and out of the restroom. After that, her head and stomach had caught up to her, and she'd doubled over onto the floor, banging her head against the stone on the way down. Shego had twisted too fast on the bathroom floor, and had ended up sitting down, and not entirely by her own power.

That had been the point where Shego had noticed the wedding band around her own ring finger, that had managed to luckily survive by being the hand farthest away from Kim when she'd attacked. She stared at it, gazing at the metal, and the tiny inscription on the top, and the one hidden on the bottom. For what seemed like forever, she just looked at the ring.

Outside, she could see Kim righting herself on the floor, still very much hung over. She also seemed to be bleeding from a small dent on her head. But Shego, curiously, felt the soreness of a healing black eye going through her own faster healing process. Something from last night, no doubt.

The two sat there for a while, and several times Shego caught Kim glancing curiously at the redhead's own ring. Neither felt like chasing the other, especially with the remnants of last night still working through their systems.

It was Shego who finally chose to end the silence; "What happened last night?"

Kim was silent for a while, eyes closed in pain. "I don't know. I remember getting to the lair, and finding you there." She swallowed, and Shego found herself looking into olive green eyes that reflected her own fear back at her tenfold. "Did we get married?"

Shego let out a single, soft, chuckle. "Come on, Princess. Your ring does say 'Kim' and 'Shego', doesn't it?"

She could see Kim's eyes widen in surprise at that, and the redhead glance down at her finger. She hastily pulled the loop around, twisting it about on her hand until she saw the other side of the band. Sure enough, on the top side it had her name, on the bottom, it had Shego's.

Not just Shego's name, she realized. Her wife's name. That was something she had never even dreamed would happen in her worst nightmares.

And Shego had the gall to laugh at that, a slow and sleep deprived chuckle, at the sight of the blood draining from Kim's face. There was no blush, no look of embarrassment, just a look of pure horror.

"Where am I?" She asked, though her mouth seemed unnaturally dry.

Shego smiled back at her, though deep in the pit of her stomach, she could distinguish the exact feelings Kim was having. She was a villain, after all, and having somehow tricked Kim into marrying her could be played towards her reputation, unlike Kim's. "You're in Canada, eh?" Shego responded, laughing a bit more openly now.

Kim shot her back a look of shock and horror. "How can you laugh at this? We got married, my life will be over when this gets out." She cried, seconds from screaming at the older woman. "What will my friends think? What will my parents think?"

Across from her, Shego only pulled herself up to sit more comfortably, making no attempt to leave or show just how much this hit her. "Well, I don't have friends." She started, catching the gaze of the redhead once more, who seemed to be shaking off the initial wave of her hangover. "And my parents are long gone. So I guess you could say I don't have a problem."

"You don't have a problem?" Kim seemed almost appalled at that. "But we're both women, it's all a sham, and we don't even love each other. We don't even like each other."

Shego did her best not to let Kim see how much that did mean to her, not that she'd ever asked for Kim to like her. But marriage did mean something to her, holy matrimony did have a special place in her heart. That empty pit in the middle of her that said she did something wrong and there was no clear way to fix it was growing steadily.

"Fine, then let's never talk about it again. It should be void in America anyway, so you've got nothing to worry about, just don't show your face around Canada, eh Princess?"

And there was that annoying 'eh', again. "Is this all a joke to you?" Kim asked in all seriousness.

For a second, Shego let the façade fall, and let her face show just how serious she could be. "Not at all, Princess. I'm being serious. We just go our separate ways, I work my magic and no one ever finds out. We never talk about it again." She said, her expression never slipping.

Kim swallowed the lump in her throat again. She still felt wrong, still felt dirty, still had a headache, and still felt a pit of guilt in her stomach that wouldn't leave. "Deal. No one finds out."

Her only response was her rival nodding. Neither seemed willing to do anything past that, but Kim finally pulled herself to a sitting position. She still had one hand over her head, blocking out the headache.

"I need a shower, I need a shower bad." She said, rubbing her arms. She was convinced that she could actually feel filth on her, feel dirty as it was. "And then I need to get out of here."

Shego just nodded again. She pulled herself up, standing above Kim. "Well, I'll get you some pants. And there's helicopter pad on the roof." She said, stepping awkwardly around Kim as Kim stood up.

Kim didn't offer any words, just closing the door behind her and stepping into the shower. It took her the better part of fifteen minutes, in which time Shego managed to find her cargo pants, complete with mission gear, but no sweater. She also found two copies of the marriage license, signed by both women, on the counter near the door, and tucked one safely away into the pants she'd pulled on.

The villainess needed a shower too, desperately. She wasn't quite as innocent as the redhead was, she knew the smell and feel of sex well. And right now there was just too much of it, hidden in the blankets, across the floor, with every piece of clothing dropped as evidence of last night.

Shego needed to get away, far away before Global Justice showed up to pick the teen hero up, and found out just what Shego had done with her. That, unlike some sham marriage, would ruin her. Few villains in the world would hire someone with a statutory rape charge above her head, especially not the higher class Hench Co. and friends type.

By the time Kim Possible exited the shower, Shego had already disappeared, leaving only the second copy of the marriage license tacked to the door.


	3. Kilauea

**A/N: **Edit 11-13-11. **~VLU**

* * *

As opposed the beautiful vistas of her Vancouver penthouse, Doctor Drakken's geothermal lair built into the side of Mount Kilauea in Hawaii was a humbling sight for it's malicious visage alone. It had been built low on the volcano's side, between the cone and the ocean, where the only landmarks were rocks that had overlapped each other, forming odd patterns like that of melting rubber. The lair had a similar motif on the outside as well, looking much like the lava had poured over the ground, then raised up like a ramp, before dripping down the edge of a otherwise metallic black building. The outside had only a single door on it, which lead all of three feet before terminating into a sulfur vent.

To truly understand the might of the 'Lava Hut', as Drakken had called it, one who had to go underwater, and through the series of inactive magma tubes that had once emptied into the ocean, before closing over. Beneath the ground, the lair spiraled and twisted, ending in rooms only at the most solid points of the earth, while other corridors lead only to dangerous pitfalls, or the escape pods that lay docked just off the coast.

The entire setup made it one of the most complex, if not the most complex, buildings on earth. Simply to build it, and to make sure the lava never flowed over the top of the building, or up from the vents below, to a mastery of geological weapons that Drakken had invented over the years, took pinpoint planning. The base was said to be indestructible, from outside sources at least, and Drakken had prided himself on it for years.

Shego thought it smelled like rotten eggs. Even with the dome of Drakken's hovercraft covering the normally open vehicle, and the air set to inside long before she approached Hawaii. It smelled exactly like rotten eggs. Living with Drakken and a venerable gaggle of henchmen had taught her that.

The lair, complex and costly or not, did nothing but sour her mood, especially after hours of nonstop flight just to reach it. Drakken probably wouldn't even be there, since from what she remembered of the night before, Kim had her sidekick occupied elsewhere. Not that Shego needed anything to do with the man. What she desperately needed at the moment was a stay in Tuscany or Rome. Italy scored big points in her book for their quiet vistas, where she could relax and focus on anything but her annoying rival, who seemed to never be a step away from her mind.

Every time she thought of the strange smells emanating from her shirt, Kim's shirt actually, or her pants, she couldn't help but picture the terrified redhead trying her best to escape. That, or Kim throwing up right in her face. She could still feel bile caked to her neck, and it pissed her off to no end. For the entire Canada to Hawaii journey she felt putrid, and her mood had suffered for it the entire way.

It didn't help that not only did Kim seem rightfully appalled by their marriage, she seemed appalled just to be around Shego. The very thought of being friends with Shego might as well have been against God's will. To her, it was like they had never been friends after she had been hit by the attitudinator, or maybe she just wanted to forget the entire thing ever happened.

By the time the hovercraft was lowering towards the water, and the entrance to the Kilauea lair, Shego's blood was boiling as much as the lava in the volcano above her. Her teeth were gritted, eyes low and focused beyond what she could see. Kim was pissing her off without even being there.

With a muffled curse, she brought her hands down, slamming them into the hovercraft's dashboard. "Damn goody-goody!" She shouted, just to bring a voice to her anger. She wasn't sure who she was more angry at, herself for slipping up in front of Possible, or Kim for freaking out and blowing the entire thing out of proportion.

The hovercraft slid silently into the water, which automatically bubbled over the raised dome as the air beneath it escaped. Beneath the water, the entire coast was shrouded in typical greenish-blue water, but soot and ash from the undersea vents coated the ground beneath. Random puffs would blow up as the hovercraft navigated, shooting over the dome and settling above. This entire piece of the island had been created over the past thousand years though, and new lava rock covered much of the ocean floor.

Shego didn't pay much attention to that, instead opting to focus on where she was piloting the circular vessel. She carefully navigated it between several rivers of recent rock, which formed arches surrounding a narrow vent far beneath the water. The only evidence of being manmade was the tiny red beacon deeper in the vent, glowing much like she had seen real lava vents do on television.

Rather than navigate the often-fatal series of tubes with just the hovercraft's headlamps, Shego opted for the easy way out, flicking a switch that illuminated the entire tunnel in light blue wires. The telemetry from the beacon, which she passed without trouble, and the beacons after it, each one located up a different winding path, fed directly into the hovercraft's computer. The autopilot would have no trouble going through the winding tunnels, not that Shego trusted it for a second.

As Drakken's inventions often went, much of the collisions from the tunnels came not from pilot error, but from a beacon telling them that there was no wall in front of them. Just like how the last time she'd trusted a microwave to cook her food right, it had spat the plate back at her, coming within an inch of beheading her. Trusting Drakken was for fools, and Shego knew she was no fool.

Almost mockingly though, the wedding band on her hand caught the lights of the dock she was approaching. "I'm a damned idiot, aren't I, Princess?" She asked the band while the hovercraft raised.

Her memories turned back to Kim's face as she found her in the shower with a sigh. "Doy."

Unlike Kim probably could, she could remember past their initial confrontation. She could remember up to the point where they'd finished off the rest of the alcohol at Boreal, and she'd propositioned the teen hero as they made their way to Vancouver. She had been the one to hit on Kim, at first at least, and her gut twisted just thinking about it. As far as stupid moves went, she rated that as high as most of Drakken's. Hitting on Kim was, and wasn't, the problem there. It wasn't that she didn't want to, it was her dream to flirt with the girl. It was just that she had done it at such a poor time to a girl who wasn't in her right mind.

Kim would hate her now, or if not, never be the same around her. It was all because of lowered inhibitions.

Shego parked the hovercraft just above the waterline. The entire thing reeked in her opinion, and she wasn't planning on coming back this way any time soon. She had a lear jet parked in this lair anyway, courtesy of Drakken owning the company that made them, and it had a much needed shower compartment and a change of clothes.

Of course, having been to this lair before told her that the hangar was the opposite way she was heading, towards the center of the compound where Drakken, or at least some hired maid, would most likely be located. She stopped in the middle of a corridor, looking down towards the entrance to the main hub in the lair.

The question on her mind was if she really wanted to see her boss at the moment. Her entire job with him consisted of getting into fights with Kim, exhilarating, mind-blowing, nearly orgasmic fights normally, where she could feel her heart pumping so hard she couldn't even hear anything else. But still, it was always Kim, and Kim was the one person she didn't want to face. To take a vacation she'd have to tell her boss, some way or another, that she was leaving. But that raised another question, did she want to come back at all?

* * *

Kim had mounted the Global Justice transport hours before, planning on catching a few hours of sleep and never thinking of Vancouver again. Apparently, Wade had informed the entire crew that she'd spent the last day chasing Shego through Canada, and they gave her some much needed space as she tucked away in a corner to nap.

Her kimmunicator had other plans though, judging by the musical tone it played just an hour into her nap. She pulled it out with one hand, groaning uncomfortably at the light it let loose when Wade's face appeared on the screen. Her hangover, toned down as it was now, had never fully left her. The headache had been souring her mood for hours already.

"Good morning, Kim. You're about halfway to Drakken's compound, I just wanted to give you a rundown of the defenses before you got there." The rounded boy said, sounding all to bright and cheerful, in contrast of Kim's dreadful mood.

"Um." Was all she could come up with. Obviously she'd slept through the part where he told her what was going on. "Okay?"

"Alright. His lair is built into Mount Kilauea, the most active volcano on earth. It uses a complex shield generator to hold the lava back from the vents it's built into, and drilled holes around it to let them vent just out of their way." As he talked, the kimmunicator's picture changed, showing a basic video rundown of the spiraling complex beneath the volcano, as well as the vents that all linked together near it's base. "It's amazing that he managed something of that scale at all."

Kim pursed her lips and nodded, though if Wade had been paying attention, he'd see that she still didn't know what was going on. "Good for him."

"Yeah. GJ loaned us a special forces heat suit for this one, you can go in through this manmade lava tube," With that said, a bright red dot appeared over the wireframe model of the vent, "To get to this one that leads straight to the lair. I'll hack the generator and shut it off right before you pass through it. The lava pressure is low enough right now that it shouldn't even be near those vents."

Nodding again, Kim said, "Okay. Why?"

Wade went into boy genius mode almost immediately. "Well, the last eruption shot enough lava out that it hasn't had a chance to build up underground, and force the stuff at the top-"

"Wade," She cut him off, giving him a stern look. "Didn't Ron take him in yesterday? Why am I doing this?"

The short hacker seemed rather shocked, his mouth forming a 'O' for what seemed like minutes. "Nobody told you?"

"Told me what?"

He laughed sheepishly, almost like he was afraid of what she'd do next. "Well, Drakken hijacked the transport. Ron, the entire GJ team, they've all been kidnapped. You're going in there to get them out."

Towards the front of the military transport, the blue-clothed personnel jumped at the sudden sound of something slamming into an inanimate object. They shot glances back at the passenger cabin, thought better of it, then turned back to their conversation.

In the back, Kim raised her head up from the back of the next seat, and slammed it forward again. It wasn't half as painful as it sounded though. She couldn't even really feel it beyond the headache that she was sure would plague her for the rest of the week.

She was entirely convinced that this was somehow either Shego's fault, for just being her own annoying self, or God's fault, for her having married Shego. She hit her head against the backrest once more, before finally leaving it there.

Wade, still looking up with the swivel-eye on her kimmunicator, gave her a worried look. "Uh, Kim? You okay?"

Kim could only nod against the backrest. "Dandy. Had the best day of my life yesterday, and it's only getting better." She finally rose, letting her head fall back to her own backrest.

The kimmunicator laughed at her. "Maybe you should leave the sarcasm to Shego." Wade offered. He seemed surprised when she hit her head against the seat once more.

That had been an hour and a half ago. Kim had spent the entire ride sitting in the cabin alone, asking God what she did wrong, and continued to come up with the same answer. She had let Shego challenge her, she had let her insult her, and finally, she had accepted the challenge. Shego had probably done the same thing to get them married, goaded her on by calling her a 'lightweight goody-goody', or something along those lines.

She had even promised herself not to think of Shego for the next week at least, but the villain was at the forefront of her mind even now. After that, Kim had suited up, parachuted out above the ocean, and sailed down to the world's most active volcano.

The supposed stealth heat suit was only stealthy because it was black, instead of the standard metal-suit silver. It still looked like she was wearing a box of tin-foil, even if it was sleeker to allow for more combat maneuvers. And it didn't make her the least bit happy when she identified the smell inside the suit as what still coated Shego's shirt. She would have begged for sulfur rather than that.

Landing in a lava tube was all too easy for her, and Wade did his regular bang-up job with the shield generator. All in all, it took her only twenty minutes from plane to lair entrance, twenty minutes with the only smell being Shego, like the older woman was standing over her shoulder the entire time. She hadn't even taken off the ring, and could feel it catching onto the suit with ever shift of her fingers.

She promised herself as she stripped out of the suit to go straight home after this. DNAmy could be releasing rabid kitten-vipers on the whole of New York for all she cared, she was going to go back to Middleton, take a shower, a bath, and another shower, and curl up in bed in her own pajamas. She'd shove the ring, the clothes, and the Canadian marriage license in some dark corner, perhaps down in the basement or under one of her floorboards, and never think of it again.

Having that sort of plan made going into mission mode just a bit more bearable. Finally back to her cargo pants and Shego's Hendrix t-shirt, Kim snuck out of the old lava vent, and into the main lair. She was automatically struck by déjà vu, after ending up in a corridor designed exactly like those in Boreal. In fact, despite the occasional twist where the plans had dodged a sulfur vent or a lava tube, the layout was exactly the same. She had no problem making her way to the command center.

The telltale clang of boots did startle her though, but seeing the dimwitted thugs that Drakken hired, complete with spiffy red suits, traipsing about the corridors actually eased her mind. They snorted as they passed her hiding spots, some just jabbering endlessly to their teammates. Others, with slightly more imagination, seemed to wait until just when they passed into her view before they reached back to scratch their asses under their uniforms. It was definitely a good sign though. Drakken never seemed to trust his guards being around his equipment, or vice versa, especially after one particularly bright group of individuals blew up Drakken's Montana lair long before Team Possible made it to the state.

Kim easily slipped around the wandering teams of goons, popping in and out of the shadows that were afforded by problems drilling through lava rock, or building into them. Just minutes later, and counting only twenty goons total, she ended up in the control center, complete with a moat of glowing green water, red walls, couch, and television. Even the control panel seemed to have been ripped straight out of Boreal.

Before she entered the room, she ducked behind, and beneath the railing of the lava tube, ending up under the grates that leveled out the more circular tubes. She could hear the indicative prattle of the blue scientist from well outside the room, his voice reaching up into a crescendo, pausing for brief periods of maniacal laughter, and finally returning to the same roaring upsurge. He sounded quite pleased with his newest plan.

_To bad it's going to fail,_ she told herself with a smirk, finally getting back into the mood for a fight. _Maybe Shego will be here too_. And with that single thought, her mood plummeted back into the sewer it had crawled from.

"And now, all I need to do is trade your life for Kim Possible's, and no one will be able to stop my latest death ray!" Drakken was shouting, just ending his speech as Kim snuck into the room, beneath the floor. It only allowed her a foot of clearance at the good areas, but she could see the leaning edge of a loose grate directly beneath Ron.

"Um, yeah. Didn't you just do this yesterday? Isn't there like a villain rule; 'Can only try to take over the world once per week'?" Ron was asking, doing a brilliant job of stalling Doctor Drakken, who twirled to him with a dramatically raised eyebrow, without even knowing it. Ron, and what looked to be an entire squad of Global Justice soldiers, all decked in blue, were hanging from separate chains in the roof, each one with a stone pillar sticking from the ground behind them. Though, perhaps curiously, the pillars didn't appear to have any real purpose.

Drakken turned back to his death ray, grumbling. The thing looked like a prop from a old forties movie about aliens, with a tip ending in a bulb, several disks sticking out of the cannon, and several more rounded parts along barrel. "Maybe under Hench's rules, but I'm an independent. It'll be a cold day down here before you see me paying that much just to take over the world." He whined.

"Dude, is that why you're using a prop from Flash Gordon? Come on, death ray, seriously?" Ron asked with a snorting laugh.

Kim waited until Drakken was entirely transfixed on his invention, presumably to show that it worked, before she quietly slid the grate from above her. She came up right behind Ron, with two GJ officers on either side, and brought her lipstick out from her cargo pants.

"A prop? This device can render all other weaponry on the planet obsolete! And I'm the only one who could possibly get it to work." The scientist pulled his goggles over his eyes, laughing maniacally once more.

"Yeah, sure."

Kim popped the lid on her newest lipstick, twisting it so the pointed red stick appeared from the tube. After having found out that Drakken's newest materials could withstand lasers, Wade had designed a special chemical that melted metals without harming organic matter. Standing on her tiptoes, she slathered a good deal on the chains while both Ron and Drakken were busy bantering with each other.

"And I'm sure Doctor Zarkov will be proud." Ron said, dripping with sarcasm.

Drakken scoffed, but didn't turn to see Ron drop to the ground. "Oh please, everyone knows Ming the Merciless was ten times better."

Kim handed off her lipstick to Ron, who moved to work on the chained GJ agents, while she took a step towards the mad scientist. She'd studied her surroundings over and over again, but caught no green or black yet. She was thankful that she didn't have to run into her again, not this soon.

_After what you said, you should be thankful_, her inner voice said. She bit her lip.

"Sorry to cut your sci-fi convention short here, Doc." She said, slipping easily into her cocky tone that was reserved only for points like this. "But I think it's time for you to put up your toys."

She seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the sight of him freezing, and ringing his hands in the air. She could almost swear to hearing an unintelligible string of curses coming from his direction. "Kim Possible!" Drakken shouted, twisting about dramatically. "I was hoping Shego had finished you off once and for all."

"Sorry, Drakken, but we actually had a lovely time last night." Her tone may have been spitting out sarcasm, but her brain was trying it's best to kill her tongue right then. "Give it up, Drakken."

A smile was her most obvious response from the scientist. "I think- not!" With a shout, he dove behind the death ray. "Shego! Get in here and kill them!"

Time, for Kim at least, seemed to slow as her head darted about. Across from her, Drakken's head turned too, both surveying every possible entrance into the control room, both trying to catch sight of the familiar green and black.

"Shego?" But by then, it had become obvious that she wasn't coming, and four beefy GJ agents were all advancing menacingly towards the blue man, knuckles cracking ominously.

"I guess you're out of luck this time, Doc." Her voice had become more laid back though, perhaps even a bit regretful. She shook it off as wanting a clear fight with the woman though. The more her name came up, the more Kim was starting to think that maybe she'd gone too far talking to Shego before the woman had disappeared earlier in the morning.

The four men pounced, and Ron turned to Kim, a wide grin splitting his face. "Booyah, KP. What took you so long?"

Kim pursed her lips uncomfortably. "Sorry, Ron, I got caught up in Vancouver." It wasn't an exact lie, just a half truth. Still, there was a knot developing in her gut just from thinking about lying to her best friend, and she knew it would only get worse by the time she talked to her parents. The sooner she could put the entire episode behind her, the better.

Nothing seemed to be wrong to Ron though, he simply clapped her on the shoulder, then started rubbing his wrists. "Well you could have called at least, you know how bad it is having to sleep with cuffs on your hands?" His comment was emphasized by him shaking his wrists and wiggling his fingers. "I'm going to have bruises for weeks."

"I'll make it up to you later," Kim promised. Her hands were both down near her hips, with her left covering the right's ring finger. "Say, Bueno Nacho, tomorrow?"

"Ah booyah!" Ron shouted, jumping up and down happily. He seemed to just notice the four officers carrying Drakken towards the service elevator out of the corner of his eye. "Ah, sorry KP, but I have to jet. I'm not letting him out of my sight again."

"Go on ahead." Ron nodded, jogging off towards the men and their prisoner. Kim couldn't find it in her to race after them though. Her sour mood had shifted into the familiar heart-pounding adrenaline high, but that too had left her in just the few minutes. She felt strangely hollow now, empty, like there was something missing without facing Shego. Perhaps even something to do with the marriage license in her pocket, and the ring she hadn't found the will to remove.

Thinking back though, the only parts that rung well enough in her mind was the downtrodden look on her rival's face with her final comments. In all her years bantering and fighting the woman, she didn't think Shego had ever looked so hurt, and that caused her an uneasy amount of grief. She really shouldn't have cared what Shego thought, even if the two had been friends once. Trying to kill her a hundred times made up for going on a double date once. She wasn't quite sure if it made up for 'through better or worse' though.

Kim walked unsteadily towards a long corridor, staring down the dark tunnel that seemed to go on forever. It seemed painfully empty, like her own pain was resonating into it. And she couldn't quite figure out just what was wrong, or how to fix it.

Without a word, and still deep in thought, Kim turned and headed back towards the service elevator, where Ron was busy patting down her arch-foe. She never saw the figure at the end of the tunnel, staring through the same emptiness, feeling a very similar pain. She never saw the figure turn away, heading back through the docks, and towards the hangar on the other side of the facility.

Shego had come to the conclusion that she had to do some soul searching. She left everything but her keys, taking her lear jet that was located several miles from Kilauea, and leaving without a word, to Kim or Drakken.

* * *

So, what happens next? Does Shego do her soul searching? Does she end up back working for Drakken, or at a familiar locale? And what happens to Kim from here?


	4. Montorio al Vomano 1

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. No big changes. Just changed one or two sentences to fix clarification issues. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

Most of Saturday had passed by the time Kim Possible was finally woken up, and by the musical chime of her kimmunicator at that. She grumbled, thrashing under her blankets to block out the dreadful noise.

Obviously Wade hadn't received the memo about how she was going to spend the rest of her life under the blankets, pretending nothing had ever gone wrong with her life. After just a few minutes of indescribable agony the tone ended though, and she let out a great sight of relief.

That lasted all of two minutes, until the kimmunicator began to sing again. This time Kim flung the covers off herself, grabbing hold of the miniature device with a death grip, and stalked out of bed, and out of her room. She ended up in the bathroom just down the hall, holding the kimmunicator that refused to stop ringing.

"Wade says you're invincible," She informed the inanimate object, looking it over in her hands. "We'll just see about that, Mister Bond." And with that said, she dropped the device into the sink, and quickly pulled both the faucets all the way around. The slightly maniacal teen let out a devilish giggle, before skipping back to her room and diving back into her bed.

It was still too early to be moving around on a Saturday, and she intended on spending every second she could right where she was. She also intended to spend it not thinking about what had happened just yesterday. But as her head hit the pillow, her right hand did too, and she found herself staring at the slim silver band, with the 'Shego' side pointed in her direction.

Slowly, almost tenderly, she pulled the band from her finger, finding the moist whiter flesh beneath it intriguing for several moments. She held the ring in her fingers, turning it over, before finally looking on the inside and finding another inscription.

"For better or worse." She read, still turning it over in her fingers. "For better or worse..."

She put the ring silently on the edge of her dresser, and stared at it as she drifted off once more.

* * *

"Kimmie, Ron's here!" Anne Possible called up the stairs, just an hour or two later.

Her response was a quick, "One minute!"

Kim had woken up just moments before, and found her finger and the top of her dresser both suspiciously bare. Her finger still had the imprint left from just wearing the ring a day, but the mahogany night table was empty, and the memory of placing the ring down exactly there to sleep away her headache was still fresh in her mind.

In the short course of several minutes, Kim had thrown every blanket and sheet off her bed, opened every drawer in the dresser, and managed to push both her bed and dresser out of alignment. The entire room looked like a small storm had passed through, and Kim could feel a knot of anxiety building in her stomach.

She was about to get really worried when she found it, glinting mischievously between the dresser and wall behind it. Kim couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief as she plucked the tiny silver wedding band from the floor, holding it up to the light.

"Now what am I going to do with you?" She asked it, before turning her thoughts to her recent hobby of talking to objects. "She made me crazy, didn't she?" She left few guesses as to just who she was talking about.

An idea had formed in her mind though, and she reached into one of the lower drawers to implement it. Tucked away behind her cheerleader uniforms was a small box, a wooden keepsake from her younger years. Opening it revealed the foolish spending of a young girl, various necklaces, snap-on earrings, and glitter designed to be pinned to clothing.

At the bottom was a simple chain, thin steel that had once been polished towards silver. She could remember wearing it with all manners of heart lockets as a child, and could remember how only it had held up through all manner of physical punishment she put it through. The chain had lasted longer than any of the lockets she'd attached to it, and looked almost made for the wedding band as she slipped it on.

"Perfect," She muttered as she tucked it away beneath the collar of her blouse. A little smile adorned her face, but nearly having lost the ring brought the entire ordeal to the forefront of her memory. Just what did the ring mean to her?

"Kim!" Her mother called out once more, and she pursed her lips at being rushed. Though anything to keep all the recent memories from returning to her seemed like a good deal.

"I'm coming!" And the teen rushed from her room.

* * *

It took Shego thirty minutes, a broom handle, and a wire hanger before she finally managed to pry her wedding band out from inside her lear jet's dashboard. She'd taken it off halfway through the flight, and hadn't noticed it was rumbling down the dash bit-by-bit until it clattered into the small crevice that surrounded a storage compartment's hatch. Opening it revealed that it hadn't so much gone inside as it had fallen down between it and the firm polymer of the dash, finally ending up somewhere far beneath the instruments she'd been flying by.

After slipping it on, sure that her finger was the safest place for the unlucky silver ring, Shego lowered the hatch to the private jet and walked down the cushioned stairs to her own private landing strip. It was tiny, just wide enough for the jet to fit in comfortably, with only a dingy little hangar at the end, but the mountains that lined either side of it promised privacy from unwanted guests. To get down without crashing, or even see it in the first place, required an existing knowledge of just where to look.

Sighing, Shego heaved her duffel bag over her shoulder and headed towards the hangar, confident that her jet was safe where it was. Her mind was on other matters anyway. The thought of returning to work, of putting up with Drakken's whining and squaring off with Kim Possible again, had almost made her sick to her stomach. The empty pit in her gut didn't want to leave either.

Over the last half a day she'd spent flying, her nerves had become shot, jolting twitches running down her limbs. She'd tried her best to justify why her body was reacting like this, but had only managed to convince herself that it was all in her head. And that got her to thinking about why it was she was feeling this way, why even she thought she was blowing everything way out of proportion.

She was a full-blown lesbian. That had never mattered before, but when she started feeling something for her younger rival, something far from love, she'd started chiding herself at every slipup. She hadn't meant for it all to get so personal either. Thinking back to the entire 'Miss Go' episode, and the _extreme_ character reversal that damned machine had inspired, had made her realize just how badly infatuated with the teen heroine she had become.

That had got her to a quick beer, then shots at the lair bar, and eventually a full-blown drunken confession to an equally smashed Kim. Cursing herself all the way, she had screwed up any possible chance she had of even getting on the girl's good side.

"_We don't even love each other. We don't even like each other," _Kim called scornfully through her memory. It was true anyway, she tried to convince herself. It was all business, just two rivals on opposite sides of the law, nothing to like about her anyway. Not that Shego could ever really convince herself of that.

And then there had been the entire fact that they were stuck in a marriage neither of them wanted, that had no weight outside a little piece of paper and the ring on her finger. Or did she want it? She'd dreamed of getting married every day of her life as a child. Nothing had been more appealing than her own 'Prince Charming', or her 'Knight in Shining Armor'. And yet; _'You have to be human to get married.'_

The thoughts of her childhood made her even more sick to her stomach. She hadn't even paid any attention as she'd traveled from her valley airfield, through the winding roads of the hills beneath the Gran Sasso mountain range in her Jaguar. The mountains above her were eternally peaked in snow, a beautiful mountain range that reminded her more of the Swiss Alps and their bounty of snowboarding lodges than it did southern Italy.

She only started paying attention when she was already driving along the twisting path that ran parallel to the mountain town of Montorio al Vomano. Ahead of her, built high on the valley that overlooked the Vomano river, was one of her two Italian villas.

The _Tierra del Sol_ villa was one of her most favorite, practically perfect in every way. It was just three stories, but built wide enough to make use of every corner. The bottom was a wide twin garage, more than big enough to fit the comfortable Jaguar, the Jeep she left here for the rugged outdoors, and an Agusta super-bike for her own pleasure. Above it was the rounded first floor, a wide patio surrounding two stories of glass, the first floor and second above it, both set up with only glass covering the visible side.

Behind the front of the house were even more patios, one set up for dining, while the one beneath it held a hot tub and pool. Everything was capped by a pointed red-tiled roof, surrounded with wiry trees that reached up well above the house, covering the driveway as well.

It was exactly the way she liked it, exquisite, yet extremely private. But she didn't even realize she had made it there until she was already disabling the electronic locks, finally letting her focus slip back to reality.

Shego was a creature of habit. After work, a tough fight, or a mentally exhausting day, it was straight back to one of her many safe houses, where she'd spend the entire day lounging with a bottle of wine or light alcohol. It was her time to unwind, let her problems ease away, and forget whatever was plaguing her for a equally sarcastic yet amiable disposition tomorrow.

As soon as her head hit the pillows on her couch, her signal to shut down and chill out, she recalled Kim's face. With her lips slightly parted, face still flush with a hangover, and hair in such a mess she could have purposefully shocked herself to get it that way. She was beautiful. Even her eyes seemed to glimmer as they watched Shego. The entire picture was so life-like that Shego reached her hand out to touch it. Seconds later, she drew it back, as if burned.

"You need to get out of my head." Shego told her imagination. Instead of chilling out, her mind had chosen to wander. And the more she thought, the more frustrated she became "Or, I need something to get rid of you."

With little else to do, Shego looked around and took stock of her options. It didn't take her long to figure out they were few and far between. Going out and mingling was out, since everything Drakken ever did got her face posted on every major news network from Italy to America. The weather was beautiful outside, which took out snowboarding, since the hills that didn't contain slush by now were laughably difficult to get to without a hovercraft.

Her eyes flashed over the chilled wine-rack in the corner. That was definitely a bad idea, considering what had happened last time. Even thinking about it made Shego shudder at the thought that she could possibly and drunkenly call her wife up. She'd been lucky enough that Kim seemed to have blacked out most of her memories, if she went back to boozing and ended up on Kim's sober side, she'd probably be burned at the stake.

Even her beautiful assortment of cars left several ways to turn up ugly, and Shego managed to convince herself that she might as well be the unluckiest person on Earth. Just a deer frolicking across the road would end a joyride in seconds, or a cop hoping to get money from a wealthy speeder.

Her thoughts left only one perfectly safe option, which included the remote built into her couch. Lying back, she flicked on the widescreen that was suspended from the roof. Another button brought the automatic blinds out, slowly folding out one by one until the covered the entirety of the crescent wall of windows.

Despite her extremely limited understanding of Italian, she had never installed a better cable into her Italian villas. Much of her time relaxing was spent in the hot tub on the back patio, or one of the spas some eighty miles away in Rome. Still, by piecing together what she could see, it was still better than American television.

The first thing that caught her eye was on the news, which wasn't about her as she'd originally feared. Instead, it showed devastation and carnage that looked more like a full-blown war than a natural disaster. It took her several moments to actually realize that it was showing the results of an earthquake, and the following aftershocks. It took her just slightly longer to realize that the villages shown weren't even that far away, and she must have been blind coming in not to notice something wrong. Not even fifty miles away, entire towns had been cracked down the center, rolled onto themselves, then spit out in a terrifying display of untamed nature. It made her problems seem almost miniscule in comparison, and made her wonder why no one had passed her on the way to her villa, trying to get there to help out.

She pursed her lips, thinking of the poor sods who had actually managed to be less lucky than her. They must have done something pretty bad for Karma to go after them that badly.

Karma, that got her thinking. She'd done some pretty messed up things in her life, but she'd always tried to stay on one side of the line, never killing, never doing anything her conscience would hound her about later, besides the occasional wheel-chair theft. She still hated that one. But now Karma was either punishing her for her wrongs, or she was going to get a boat-load after it realized how badly she'd screwed up her own teenage rival. Sex with a drunken Kim was more rape than it could ever be consensual, at least in her opinion.

And she was stuck like this too, calling her contacts to erase any sign of the marriage would give an entire criminal underworld blackmail material against her for years. She hadn't mentioned that part to Kim, for fear that the girl would either have a heart attack or find some way to blow everything even more out of proportion. At the very least no one was looking into it though, no government agency or paparazzi would even think to look through Canadian records for something like that.

_I'm in the clear. And yet, I feel like shit about it_, she returned to thinking about something to take her mind off this mess. Anything would do.

_Maybe I don't need something to take my mind off it. Maybe I just need a bit of Yin for this Yang._ It snapped in her mind, coming to her all at once. The idea was brilliant, at least to her. Just do something good, anything good, and she'd balance out whatever she'd done to Kim. Then it was as simple as going back to work and forgetting anything ever happened.

Shego sat a moment longer, trying her best to think of something good to do while she watched the news about the quake. Surely there was something…

Her eyes focused for a second as she read about the rescue efforts, and after flicking on a light bulb above her head, she slapped a palm to her face out of sheer stupidity. _Of course._

* * *

"Uh, Kim, you alright?"

Kim didn't look up, pushing her salad from one side of the bowl to another. "Hmm? Yeah, I'm fine." Her heart wasn't in it though, but it didn't take Ron Stoppable to figure that one out.

"Yeah, I don't think so. We've already been here two hours you know, and you haven't said a word, or taken a bite." That was said motioning towards Kim's salad, which now lay with every piece of lettuce on one side, while the rest of her vegetables each held their own separate piles.

She opened her mouth to speak, looked up at him, then closed it. A little sheepish smile was all she could manage at first. "I'm sorry, Ron, I'm just a bit preoccupied."

"Eh, it's no big, KP. You know I'm here to lend you my ear, or whatever." He raised his hands, signifying peace, even as he snickered at his own rhyme.

"Thanks, Ron. But…" She shot a suspicious look across the rest of the Bueno Nacho. Ever since she'd put the ring across her neck, it felt like everyone was glancing towards the tiny lump under her shirt. Or like everyone was leaning in when she spoke, just waiting for some slipup.

"But..?" Ron offered.

Kim sighed and shook her head. "I'm going paranoid. Come on, let's take a walk." She scooped up her salad bowl, and seconds later the two were walking outside the Bueno Nacho and into the dimming sunlight. It was still a nice day out, considering she'd spent most of it inside thinking herself in circles. Still too bright to be cold, and too dark to be hot.

"So, what's eatin' you KP?" Ron asked comfortably.

Her mouth was open, but the words just weren't coming out. Once more she'd managed to think herself in circles. Since Ron had dropped by, she'd been considering the implications of telling him. If it got out over town, her entire life would be ruined, from school to home. She'd get into even more trouble because she hadn't mentioned it to her parents, and that was added to the fact that she'd had a drunken lesbian tryst with her villainous rival, that ended up with her getting married.

If it ever got out, she knew she was doomed. But Ron had never really let her down before. "Ron, this is between you and me, okay?"

"Uh-" The look on his face was blank, but he nodded anyway. "Of course."

"I mean it, Ron," She made it perfectly positive just how serious she was by her tone. "No one can know. Not your parents, not your little sister, no one."

He pursed his lips and nodded. If it was really that important to her, then he knew she had to make sure. It was if she told him or not that he knew she really trusted him.

"You know last night, when I chased Shego down?" She asked, and he nodded with an affirmative grunt. "I didn't spend all night chasing her." She admitted, looking away to the finely manicured lawns as they walked down the sidewalk.

"That's what this is about, you didn't chase Shego down?" He asked, and from his wording he was almost right to be disbelieving.

"No. Ron, I spent all night with her." Now he was silent, and they walked quietly for a minute. "She challenged me. She just riled me up and played me right into her hands, and next thing I knew we were drinking down in Vancouver."

"Drinking?" He asked, sounding rightly incredulous. "Like, beer?"

She nodded sadly. "Something like that. I guess we must have just been playing some kind of truth or dare, or something. Next thing I knew I had this." She turned towards him, but once more eyed her surroundings suspiciously. As he was about to ask her what she was talking about, she slipped the necklace from beneath her shirt, holding it up for him to see.

"A friendship ring?" He asked dubiously.

She sighed and shook her head. "Ron, just read the inscriptions." Kim huffed.

"Alright, just hold it up a bit closer." He squinted against the dying light. "Let's see, it says; 'Kim and Shego, for better or worse'?"

"It's a wedding band, Ron." She told him, flat out, before stuffing it back under her shirt.

"Wait… You? And her?"

If Ron was anything, it was dependable. Right now, she could depend on him to either throw a fit, or pass out in the middle of the road. Judging on his expression, neither was unlikely. "Look, it doesn't mean anything, okay? No big, just a dare, that's all."

It still looked like he was hyperventilating. His breaths came out in short, uneven, gasps. She could practically see his head swimming. "You and her?"

"Nothing's going on between us, Ron." She insisted once more, feeling more and more like crawling into a little corner with every second. Ron didn't reply. "Ron?"

She almost managed to catch him before he passed out in the street.


	5. Italy 1

**A/N:** Edit 11-13-11. The original script for this had Ron helping Zita configure her game. That apparently didn't make much sense, so I switched it around. Also added an occasional description, and fleshed out Price a tiny bit. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

Ron woke rather slowly, on a familiar couch in a familiar living room. He groaned and sat up, stretching his sore back, and pushing himself around to sit on the sofa right.

"Good afternoon, Ronald, did you sleep well?" A woman asked from behind him, towards the kitchen.

He nodded, only half turning to see Anne Possible walk around the couch, glass of ice-water in hand. "Yeah, had the weirdest dream though."

"Oh really?" She asked and set the glass down. "What about?"

"It's weird, I dreamed that Kim told me she got married to Shego. Funny, huh?"

Anne raised an eyebrow, watching him carefully. A little bump on the head could cause odd dreams, but Kim had said he'd just fainted on the sidewalk when she brought him in. "Yes, funny."

Ron, though, was blissfully ignorant of Anne's calculating stare. "Yeah, what am I doing here anyway? And where's Kim?"

"She said you fell asleep at the Bueno Nacho." She lied. There wasn't really any reason to work Ron up, after all. "And Kim got called out by your friend Wade."

"Wade? Aw man, why didn't she wake me up?"

Anne smiled and handed him the glass of ice-water. "We tried, why do you think you're soaking right now? I was just about to try again too."

Looking down with wide eyes, Ron noticed that he was in fact soaked. The entire top half of his shirt had been covered in water, with a few ice-cubes laying about under and on top of him. He laughed sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess I can kinda sleep in sometimes." Anne nodded knowingly and sat beside him. "So, do you know what KP's out for?"

"I'm not sure, it didn't sound terribly urgent when I talked to Wade." Anne admitted.

That got Ron's attention though. "You talked to Wade?"

"Well when I went upstairs I found her phone attempting to open the door so it could get out of the bathroom-" She lifted a hand to stop Ron's question, "I'm not sure why it was in the bathroom either. But he said that a few minutes ago a villain was seen in Italy." Just who the villain was, she didn't mention. "Not killing anybody, or even doing anything, I don't think. But Kim's going over to check it out."

Ron stood bolt-upright, already ready to go save the day. "It could be a trap! And where are my pants?"

Anne smiled devilishly as she got up to leave. "You should probably go out and find them, before it gets dark."

* * *

"So you really had no idea who she was?" Kim asked, stepping under the tent's low door. The room she ended up in was a large rounded tent, with several bunks lining each wall, a generator off in a corner, a single dry board in the center, and a large table with a map in front of that.

"'Fraid not, Miss." The man she was talking to was like a lot of those around her, a United Kingdom Red Cross regiment placed on the scene of the recent disaster. He was a military man through and through, and an older one at that. She did find his accent interesting, with the low growl he talked with and the short, succinct sentences, whatever he said sounded like he was getting ready to kill something. "She shows up like a super hero, offering to slag a lot of the rubble trapping a few folks. What're we supposed to say; 'No, we might be able to get to them in time anyway'?"

"She's a villain-" Kim cut in.

Price, part-time leader of this regiment, cut her off just as fast. "Yeah, yeah. We were all surprised by her villainous wiles." He said, tone dripping with sarcasm. "Now, is there anything else? Or are you just going to keep bothering me while people are out dying?"

"No," She replied, rubbing her head to halt the growing headache she was developing. "I'm sorry, I'll let you all get to work."

Huffing loud enough to pivot his bushy mustache, Price turned away and headed back to the map he'd been surveying when Kim had shown up. They'd both figured each other to be wastes of time a while ago. Price, who'd been up for the past several days overseeing the rescue efforts, firmly believed that she was just a bother. Kim had found out that the sour Brit had little curiosity as to who Shego was, or where she was going.

Still, she couldn't help the nagging feeling that she should be out helping these people, even if moving rubble wasn't her specialty. Her feeling was emphasized when she turned around and ran into another tired relief worker, a fireman covered in soot and grime, who shuffled past her wearily on his way to an empty bunk.

Kim chewed on her lip, before finally turning back to Price. "Look, once I find her, I'll come back and help out, okay?" She tried to quell the guilty feeling with the promise, and found herself continuing, "But it's really important that I find out what she's up to first."

Price looked up only briefly from the map, first watching the firefighter pass, then turning his gaze to Kim again. The look on his face wasn't pleased, or angered even, just dead tired. "Look, lass, no offense to you really. But you've got to be what, a buck twenty? I'd be surprised if you didn't just get underfoot."

She opened her mouth with a retort on the tip of her tongue, but closed it just as fast. Speed and danger were her things, after all, and what this didn't need in strength, it needed in the skill of not crushing the people they were attempting to save.

"That reminds me, just don't get underfoot," He finished, waving her off dismissively. He was already focused on the map once more, going over the unchecked blocks and buildings with the several other relief workers piled around the table.

With an uneasy sigh, Kim stepped back outside the tent, passing several other relief workers on her way to the edge of the Red Cross' command center. The air was abuzz with the sound of men clamoring about, engines turning over in the far lots as aide supplies were shipped in, one military six-wheeler after another, and the steady hiss of air coming from deeper in the valley, barely rustling the mist that layered the country-side around the center. It was almost cold enough to warrant a jacket, but Kim had been through worse, and shrugged it off as she started walking away from the center, towards the path that lead down the hill to the town.

She didn't have any real destination in mind, just trying to clear her head in the morning air. It wasn't working either. _Shego… What's your angle?_

Kim sighed in frustration. Jet lag and an unusual sleeping schedule, as well as jumping across the world three times in the past two days, were starting to wear on her already. It wasn't so much physical weariness or overall discomfort. But she knew Shego better than this, she could swear she did, she just couldn't figure any of it out.

She couldn't figure out why Shego was here pretending to help, or if she actually was helping, why. There didn't seem like anything worth stealing here, and the thought of Shego just coming in to prey off the dead or unlucky made her stomach turn. Despite being a villain, and well… Evil. Kim knew Shego wouldn't stoop to that level. She just couldn't convince herself of that.

There was an angle her she just wasn't seeing.

"_BEEP, BEEP, BEEP._" Her communicator intoned, breaking her from her reverie as she was walking down the final stretch to the ruined village, lying deep in the pit of the valley.

She pulled it out and answered it, disregarding the regular pleasantries; "This is Kim, go."

"KP!" Ron shouted happily in her ear.

She tried not to think to much, trying not to spoil her boyfriend's mood with her own introspective one. "Ron, what's up? Did you just wake up?" She asked, checking her wrist watch with that question. She had no idea it'd been that long since she left Middleton.

"Nah. I was looking for my pants in the street, and… Well…" Ron drifted off sheepishly. She could easily imagine him smiling and scratching the back of his head in his own typical fashion.

She rolled her eyes and smiled, halfway between amused and irritated by his antics. "Spit it out, Ron, I'm not going to be mad."

"Well, Zita called me to help find her cat, and I just got back home. I swear, nothing happened though. I just helped her find her cat, and maybe spent a few hours getting her help configuring add-ons to Lords of Everlot."

A part of her wanted to be mad at her boyfriend spending several hours over at his ex's house, or vice versa. She could easily feel her temper rising at it, but just as quickly, her guilt cut in. _After what I told him before I left yesterday, I don't think I can afford to be angry at him_, she scolded herself.

"It's fine, Ron. I trust you." She said after a few tense seconds, hearing him breath a sigh of relief over the communicator.

"Nothing happened, scouts honor." He assured her. "So, need any help over there in Italy?"

Kim sighed and pursed her lips. "Nope. Maybe if there was something here, but there's not. The people here say that Shego just came in, 'slagged some rubble', and left. Get this, they say she actually helped save a couple children."

"Really?" He shouted in reply. "Maybe she's going good again?"

Kim slowed down, dropping down to look over the hill that lead down to the city limits. It spread out a while behind her too, up past the hill, and over to the mountains on the other side of her, but the destruction was so much easier to see from here. Even with the fog covering the buildings, hiding the sloped city from prying eyes, the destruction was clear. Buildings caved in, streets ripped apart and rolled over like sheets of paper. Anything and everything that had been left outside was shuffled in some way, most cars even rolling over or caving into the ground.

"Kim?" Ron asked when she didn't respond.

She sighed. "This is Shego we're talking about, Ron. She doesn't just 'go good' without anything short of divine intervention."

"Ouch, harsh one, KP." Ron replied. "I mean, I've got no love for Miss Green and Mean either, but she's still human. Down there, somewhere." He muttered. "I mean, we haven't seen it, but it exists-"

"Ron." She scolded him, unable to hid the giggle that followed. "Okay. So maybe I am being a bit hard on her, but it still doesn't make any sense."

"Why's that?" Ron asked, mentally cursing himself for the stupidest question ever.

Kim rolled her eyes again. "Shego just decides to go to Italy to help some quake victims, after trying to take over the world just yesterday-"

"Day before yesterday, KP." Ron corrected.

"Okay, after trying to take over the world the day before yesterday. Where was she yesterday anyway? Why show up now, of all times, to start helping out?"

"Maybe she's just trying to repent for something," He suggested. "Or there could be some sort of diamond mine under this place. Maybe she was just find some jewels knocked out from the quake?"

Kim was silent as he spoke, her mouth slightly ajar, eyes staring, unseeing, over the town. _Repent for something… It couldn't be because of… Right?_

"Even if she did do something real bad, she wouldn't try to make up for it, right?" She asked, feeling stupid the second she did.

"Well that's what I would do." Ron said, yawning rather loudly in her ear. "And I mean, she might be evil, but if it was something bad enough… It's not like she ever killed anyone, you know?"

"I guess. I should get back to looking for her, Ron, and it sounds like I'm keeping you up." She said, listening to him chuckle sheepishly for a second.

"Yeah, it's been a while since I got some sleep." He admitted. "I'll let you get back to work. Call me if you need me. Love you."

Kim smiled. "Love you too, bye."

The two hung up and she pocketed her communicator. She was still squatting on the path, staring down across the town, hoping for some flare of green fire in the edge of her vision. Truth was though, she knew that Shego wouldn't be found if she didn't want to be, and she didn't even know what she would say to her once they spoke.

"_Hello, honey, I'm here to kick butt and send you to jail."_ She laughed mirthlessly, but shook her head to clear the thoughts.

Talking to Ron did raise another interesting dilemma though. Was it wrong to be with him, when she was already married, even if it was just a heartless marriage? Was it wrong to Shego too?

"Not what I needed right now…" She growled unhappily, rubbing her head some more. By the time she sorted this out, she'd need migraine medication just to get through the day.


	6. Italy 2

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Grammar fixes. Fleshed out one or two things. That's basically it though. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

"Look, girl. I'm nothin' but grateful to ya' for helpin' out here an' all. But if yer' just gonna cause trouble, maybe it's best you leave," Price said, standing amidst the relief workers in the command center. They bustled about, mostly ignoring him and focusing on their tasks, though few did glance towards the large blackboard that held a map tacked to it.

"I know," A voice called from behind the map, feminine, with a distinct nasally quality and a distinctly dangerous tone. "I didn't mean to bring this on your head," Shego said, stepping out from behind the map. "Thanks for…" She tapered off, motioning back to the blackboard she'd been hiding behind when Kim had entered.

"Well, you scratch my ass," Price explained, making some sort of obscene gesture with his marker.

"I'll pass," Shego said, declining with a chuckle, "And none of that forest you call a back either. I've seen that shower you guys got outside, it's like a-"

"Couple a' bears with a lawn hose?" Price finished. "What can we say? Real men don' wax."

"Perfect example of why I play for the other team," Shego retorted. "I really have to go before Kim gets back," She finished, excusing herself to brush out of the tent.

A quick glance around showed the familiar mop of red hair starting off into the morning mist, heading on a path that lead down the hill, parallel the gravel road used by the heavy supply trucks. It was also opposite the direction of Shego's ride. For a brief moment, she actually considered just following her.

That brief moment didn't last long though. As she watched her walk away, she considered the countless other spies and agents who'd followed Kim before and the ones who'd followed Shego herself. It was a rookie mistake to stick your head out when you could watch from a more comfortable vantage point.

_Sneaking around behind her like a crook. You're a coward, Shego,_ she chided herself.

"It's not my fault you're afraid of commitment," She grumbled beneath her breath.

Satisfied that the girl wasn't going to be turning back, and no one had seen her talk to herself, she turned and crossed to the other side of the shoddy gravel encampment. Her thoughts were steadily growing more clouded, and she could feel a headache growing.

_Why did you marry her then?_

"It was a drunken bet," She mumbled, passing around the tent to the lot that held her Jag.

_So we can assume it meant nothing, then? Of course, keeping the ring meant nothing either…_

Still grumbling under her breath, she popped open the driver's seat and slid in. "I know my past, I know what this means to me. 'You have to be human to get married.'" She spat mockingly.

_Of course, that's all it means._ Her conscience had never sounded so sarcastic in her life.

She sat in the car for several minutes, hands gripping the wheels, yet making no attempt to actually start it. A confusing rush and jumble of emotions had taken over her mind, trying desperately to sort out where her fractured past ended, and her sorrowful dreams for a new life began.

With no answers, she resigned herself to beating her head against the steering wheel for several minutes.

* * *

It was almost four hours later before Shego found Kim again. She had stopped back by her villa for a quick shower and nap, then took her bike out to rest on one of the overlooking hills with a set of powerful binoculars, courtesy Doctor Drakken, and watched over the city like a hunting hawk for the next hour.

Kim had spent much of her time down near the riverbed that ran through the bottom of the valley, resigned to helping survey teams section off dangerous buildings and loose ground with varied colors of tape. Eventually she set her borrowed gear down and climbed back up the slope, taking the safer pathways up into the main section of town, where Shego finally caught sight of her.

While the Red Cross camp was just beneath Shego on her left, tucked away in a lot that once held farming vehicles for the vineyards out of town, Kim was several miles down on her right, climbing the precarious sheets of metal that had been left from several warehouses in the district. She wasn't alone in the district either, Shego could count at least half a dozen men sitting about on a winding road leading up the hill beside her, and another half a dozen still surveying the riverbed behind her. There were even several men wandering around just a flew blocks down from her, and more off at the start of the hill, where the raised ground met the riverbed.

Something irked Shego about the setting, while Kim remained blissfully unaware from her perch on top of the ruined structure. From what Shego could see, Kim was just unpacking a small lunch, and sitting on what had once been the roof of the building, diving into her sandwich and water bottle like she was starving. Shego, content that Kim wasn't going anywhere, started scanning the surrounding blocks for just what had sparked her paranoia.

It took several minutes for her to sift through the scenery and find it. The sun was shining high in the sky, blanketing the ground in bright rays that shone from almost every angle; bright lights reflecting off broken glass and metal to distract her, and rocks and dust now brighter than the tanned skin of the workers around Kim. Shego finally noticed it though, on one of the men walking through the empty blocks just down from where Kim was, towards Shego's side of town. Strapped around his back, and held in a loose grip with one hand, was the unmistakable form of a brown assault rifle.

_A Kalashnikov?_ Shego questioned to herself, peering as close as she could at the weapon the man fielded. He was in plain clothes too, lacking the vest of the Red Cross, but no different than any of the other workers around Kim. That changed things.

She rolled the zoom for her binoculars, quickly throwing a single glance across the terrain. Shego's eyes moved from man to man as quick as they could, counting as she went.

_Six above her, at least four wandering the blocks beneath her… Looks like seven back at the riverbed, and five more down the river towards the hill,_ She noted, before shoving the binoculars back in her jacket and turning for her bike.

Knowing Kim's luck, she had just minutes to cross the several miles of ruined roads and alleys between them, before someone with a gun noticed her there and got the wrong impression. Shego never noticed the man running up towards Kim though.

Kim, however, did, and set her sandwich down on the plastic bag beside her as he got closer. She had him sized up long before he got close to her; a tall, middle-aged, man. Thin, with a beak-like nose and graying hair, from his face, she could see wrinkles that told of a history of laughing and smiling, but now he just seemed excited.

"Meess! Meess!" The man shouted at her, coming to a stop several feet from the caved wreckage of the warehouse's entrance. "Italian?" He asked, panting.

"No, sorry. Just English." Kim responded, getting to her feet. "Is something wrong?"

"_Si!_ Yes! There ees people, stuck een tiny hole," He explained in fractured English, holding his hands up in a circle to emphasize his point.

Kim perked up, jumping down from the slanted roof to stand beside him. "Where?" She asked, looking up with determination hardening her eyes. After hours of tape, the chance to save someone was a chance she wasn't willing to pass over.

"Over there!" He said, pointing off towards the riverbed, at the foot of the hill that lead the ruined city up to the skyline.

She nodded, quickly pulling her Kimmunicator from her belt. She held her thumb over the 'CALL' symbol, a shortcut to reach directly to Wade, and was talking before the screen even lit up. "Wade? I need you to get in touch with a Sergeant Price in the United Kingdom's Red Cross near here. Lead him to my coordinates."

"Got it." The tanned hacker said, nodding as he started typing. "What should I tell him?"

"There are people trapped under a-" Kim paused, turning to the aging man beside her.

"Was basement." He said, already itching to start jogging back, though his breath was still heavy with exertion.

"Collapsed house, I guess. It's near the riverbed, North-East side of town." She explained, clipping the device back onto her belt.

"Got it, K.P., I'll have him there in a few minutes."

"Please and thank you, Wade. I've got to jet, sorry."

She couldn't see the hacker nod as she ended the conversation. Instead, the worker had started jogging ahead of her, and she took off at his heels, heading down the cracked street towards the hill. He pointed off in the distance as he jogged, at a flag-pole that had tilted from the hill, over the river.

"I'll go on ahead, catch up when you can." Kim told him, breaking out into a dash. Instead of taking the path the man had, around the next block and along the river-walk, Kim vaulted over the sheet-metal fence that lined the yard of an old meat factory, jumping onto the crisscrossed poles that had tipped over into the driveway.

At a heightened dash, she reached the end of the poles in mere seconds, ending with a acrobatic flip, and a quick roll, that took her onto the street on the other side of the fence. She could see what the man had been pointing at from here, a group of men standing at the northern end of the hill, where its entire face had given way, taking a good number of villas and terraces with it.

There were four men in all, each digging through the dirt around a cement structure with shovels and hands. Two of them were coordinating, lifting large slabs of cement and tossing them carelessly into the dry river, the other two dug around, trying to clear as much space as possible. She could hear the high-pitched voices of children even as she approached.

By the time she got there, she realized that the entire front of the house the hill had once held had fallen down. Parts of the basement had reached the bottom of the riverbed, and parts of the roof, and much of the floor, now slanted down over it.

She quickly rushed along the edge of the river-walk, jumping the railing at the end to scramble up the hill and to the four men. One of them noticed her before the rest, motioning her up quickly.

He pointed down at a corner of the cracked floor, poking out over the edge above the riverbed, where a heavy toolbox was supporting a massive slab of concrete, its entire left side crumpled like a piece of paper. The other men were all working around it, trying to remove as much debris as they could so they could slide it away.

Despite a lengthy explanation from the man, entirely in Italian, Kim already had the gist of it. Under the concrete supported by the box was a small hole, the corner of the wall and floor, with just enough space for Kim to squeeze through. She could hear voices from it, children from their pitches.

"Yeah, I got it." She said, quieting down the man beside her as she rolled up her sleeves.

The man nodded and joined his friends, clearing the chunks of concrete from above her entrance. Kim was still trying to make herself as small as possible, already having dropped her belt and pack, and now tying her hair into a thin ponytail, which she tucked into her shirt.

None of them were expecting the ground to shudder beneath them. It was barely a trickle at first, but the undeveloped hill slid visibly, gravel sliding out of place and rest feet below.

Kim realized what it was just seconds before the rest of them did, and silently mouthed the word; "Aftershock," With a look of fear on her face.

The second wave of the aftershock took her off her feet, leaving her scrambling up the hill on her knees to keep from the wave of dirt suddenly shaking out from beneath the floor of the basement. It wasn't the first aftershock of the day, but the others were just shudders, and here, the ground was caving out beneath her, resettling somewhere far below.

Kim jumped as the rest of the dirt slid loose, catching hold of the cracked edge of the floor with the tips of her fingers. Beneath her, dust was already billowing up, and in front of her, half the basement now lay exposed, teetering precariously over the riverbed.

She silently thanked God that the upper floors that were being held up by the basement hadn't shifted any. Still, she could hear the concrete struggling under the weight of the rubble placed atop it. Above even that were the shrill screams of children.

The toolbox above the hole buckled just a fraction of an inch, and all four men jumped to grab the concrete it was supporting. Several of them shouted back at her, though shouting didn't improve her understanding of Italian.

"Okay, just hold it up!" She yelled above the screaming children, pulling herself up the hanging lip of concrete and towards the open hole.

It was still just big enough to fit her, and she shoved herself unceremoniously in, hoping that the four of them had been smart enough to at least shine a light through and see how far it went. She was lucky enough for it to last a good half a dozen feet, going from sharp little gravel to another, diagonal, slab of concrete above, before it ended.

The end was a tighter fit, but with a bit of worming she made it through, and into an open space, where the identifiable remains of the first floor supported a pocket of air, covered in darkness. Nothing her high-powered Kimmunicator couldn't fix, she knew, pulling the device from her cargo pants.

The deafening sound of screaming children was coming from the opposite direction as the groaning concrete, and she realized the problem as soon as she saw it. A support beam from the first floor had fallen through, wedging into a door as it landed, a door rumbling with the pounding fists of children behind it.

"I'm going to get you out of there!" She shouted over their screaming, moving to the support beam. "Just calm down!"

One voice, over the others, shouted something she actually understood above their pleading. "Americana!"

She gripped the piece of timber, yanking on it as hard as she could with no result, before backing off to go from a different angle. Her Kimmunicator, now clipped to her pants, only lit half the room, blanketing the room in an odd white glow as she worked, pulling as hard as she could, until, finally, the bottom of the beam budged.

It slipped out all at once, sending her onto her back with sheer force alone, with the beam clattering beside her. The door shuddered once before falling, giving her just seconds to slide out of the way as it went.

It must have been the combined power of the top of the door, and the wedge, she realized, since the hinges had already popped off some time ago. The walls split, halfway between the floor and ceiling, spitting dust as a crack surrounded the room all at once, even as the children piled over her.

Kim motioned over to the hole, her eyes focused on the roof above the children, instead of looking at them at all. Her mind had already kicked into overdrive, now well aware that the entire floor would topple and fall forward without the beam holing it.

She rocked backwards, then jumped to her feet in one fluid motion, picking up the beam beside her, and wedging it against the roof above her with a grunt. Before she could even jump back to follow the children, it was already sliding out of place.

Grabbing it again, Kim pushed as hard as she could, holding the wall up, even though it pushed against her at every moment. The entire room was much more crooked than it had been when she entered, and holding the beam gave her quite a bit of time to look around and think. What she saw and what she realized were most definitely not good. Even with the beam wedged beneath the roof above her, the entire room was starting to snap and splinter. Parts of the roof were drooping on either side of her, even the floor was splitting.

It all created the intense sound of churning rocks, like chewing on cereal, but intensified a hundred fold. It didn't take long at all before the previously settled dust started spewing out from the cracks too, blocking her vision and hiding any hope of escape.

_I wonder what they're going to say at my funeral,_ she thought morbidly, _'Kim Possible, teen hero, dead two days after lesbian tryst and quickie-wedding to infamous villain, Shego'? It's going to be the first thing they see when looking into my death._

She laughed when thinking of everyone being more weirded out by her wedding than her death, and Shego being the only one to cry at the news. _My wife, huh? Like she'll even care._ _Not after what I said…_

During her thoughts, she briefly recognized the shape of an open refrigerator at the far end of the next room where the children had been hiding, almost a dozen feet away from her. Definitely her best shot at surviving if she let go of the beam, since the sounds of children behind her had long since faded to nothing.

With a deafening crack, the floor behind her caved in and everything short of the first floor's floor went crashing down into the riverbed. She could almost like it to a monster eating the roof. Her eyes widened, even as light from behind her suddenly filtered through the haze of dust that had permeated the air since the aftershock.

_I hope they made it out…_ She thought, as the beam in her hands finally splintered, and the roof came crashing down.

_I'd hate to have not died alone._ Her brain insisted.

The roof took almost no time to collapse on her. She didn't even have time to react, but she did have a very brief moment to wonder at the sudden green tinge the dust around her took. Like an aura, an aura that instantly brought to mind Shego.

In the short time it took her to blink, the green bolt of plasma caught her square between the shoulder blades, sending her flying through the air. Kim Possible passed out hitting the back of an empty fridge.

* * *

Standing on an open terrace several hours later, a man, almost nondescript in every way, whimpered into a cell phone. Around him, drinking under the shade of a still-decent house, half a dozen of his cohorts threw looks about, chuckling under their breath.

"I- I don't know!" He shouted into the cell. "I was patrollin' wid' it, just like you says, and 'dis chick comes and beans me in 'de back of 'de head."

The enraged shouting from the other side of the phone could be heard from everyone around. Several of them laughed, the others knew better. They knew that if one of them went down, and he would go down, the others would follow. 'Insolence', their boss called it.

"Send a patrol wid' it, that's what we did!" He shouted desperately back at the man. The voice came back, more seething with anger than boiling over with it. "Oh… Send it with patrols?"

"_What did you think it was, dip-shit!"_ Was heard loudly enough to be clear to everyone on the terrace.

"We thought you was gon' go pick it up." He insisted. He ran a hand through his tangled brown hair, stepping out from the shadows of the house to look over the city, spread out beneath the hills the terrace was situated on, still listening intently to his boss on the other end of the line.

"Of course I know who hit me," He replied, "It was 'de chick wid' 'de black and green. She was chasin' some redhead chick." He paused another moment, letting his boss reply. "Yeah, her skin was kinda funky green.

"Well, no- No, she didn't exactly steal it, ya see. 'Da cops was comin', and 'dose military Brit guys, so I had to stash it, see? I come back, and it's gone! 'Dey took it, I know 'dey did."

Sitting in a plush chair, overlooking the skyline of a city that was just entering morning, a man nodded, his sharp blue eyes narrowed in a glare. His thin, pale, lips were drawn into a purse, and for a second he didn't say anything, letting a deadly silence descend into his phone.

"If they took it, I'll have to deal with them…" His idiot lackey mentioned something on the other line, and he let out a frustrated groan. "Yes, I know who you're talking about! Look, you imbecile, just get your little idiot friends and you back on a plane to Pacific. We have work to do."


	7. Montorio al Vomano 2

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Same deal, no major changes. Quite a few more misplaced commas than I'd like, but I'm quite glad with how few spelling errors there have been. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

For the second time in a single week, Kim woke up sore and groggy. She just thanked all the gods in the universe she was missing the other signs of a hangover. Her body ached from a hundred different directions, mostly just numbed scratches, many of which seemed to be covered in bandages, she was also thankful to discover. One was slightly too big for a simple band-aid.

Letting her eyes adjust to the heightened brightness of a peach-colored room, one of Kim's hands trailed up her body, ending just beneath her breasts. Her ribs were sore, far worse than her head, and no doubt blotted an ugly purple. What was worse was that the entire reason her ribs were sore was because of her back, which was comfortably numb for now.

"Let's see…" Kim murmured beneath her breath. "Fingers," She waggled her digits, one after another, until every one of them had moved, "Check. Toes," Next went her toes, dancing in her socks, "Check. Eyes," Her eyes opened once more, but squeezed shut when the sun assaulted them again, "Check. Ow…

"Everything seems to be in order," Kim surmised, finally feeling up to pushing herself to her elbows. Her back didn't just pop, it cracked and ripped, blotting out her senses with white-hot motes of light.

She had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming, squeezing her eyes shut as all of her muscles locked up. She arched as hard as she could against the bed, trying her hardest to keep from irritating the seared flesh of her backside.

"Oh, come on, it's not that bad." Shego insisted from the doorway, standing with her arms crossed above her chest.

Kim shot her an angry glare, squinting against the light, and completely ignoring the fact that Shego was wrapped in a towel and nothing else. "You shot me!" She growled angrily.

"Yeah, I shot you with a ball of 'super-heated plasma'." Shego admitted sarcastically. "Which is why you're just a little toasted, and not powder from the neck down. You know how hard that shot was?"

That earned another glare, and Kim hissed in pain before shouting; "Yes!"

"Hard to make. Jeeze, quit whining." Shego huffed, stepping around the bed. Kim spotted Shego's destination in the corner. Rather, it was the corner, two sliding doors against the back of the room that Kim could only guess was a walk-in dresser larger than her room. At least, judging by the rest of the swanky pad that she could see, it was.

"I mean, I've got to put more 'force' than 'heat' in it, and that's basically like blowing a bubble out your nose that's oval instead of circular. And of course, I've got to put just enough to launch you without snapping your spine. And even then, I've got to play 'human billiards' and blast you into a fridge smaller than you are."

"You could have just let me die," Kim spat, struggling with her elbows until she was sitting, more or less.

Shego threw a glance over her shoulder as she slid the double-doors open. "No can do, Dear. For one thing, that's still my job, no one else's. For another, well… You are mine now, you know?"

"Bull." Kim replied flatly.

"Tut, tut. Temper, Kimmie." Shego scolded, practically stating her amusement with her tone.

_It's not every day that she gets to save my life by shooting me, after all,_ Kim admitted to herself sourly. She could remember the refrigerator just faintly before blacking out, but she could clearly remember thinking that it was her best shot. Apparently Shego thought so too, but Kim found herself more surprised that she would admit it. "I'm sorry," Kim murmured, just louder than a whisper.

"Excuse me?" Shego asked, popping her head from the dresser.

"Thank you, for saving me." She responded. Her tone was a bit more mechanical than grateful, but it put a smile on Shego's face.

"You're very welcome." Shego replied in kind. "Should have been taping that."

"Hardee-har," Kim glanced back at Shego, almost fearing what the woman was doing as they talked, but thankfully found her sifting through a wide variety of jackets. On a stand in front of her, she already had a pair of pants and a blouse, as well as a set of, rather skimpy, undergarments.

Kim blushed, turning back to the wall she had been watching a bit too quickly. "Don't call me that again." She said, before she could stop herself.

Shego hardly looked up from her clothes, responding with the same tone a married couple would discuss the newspaper with. "What, 'Kimmie'? I always call you that."

"No, I meant 'Dear'. It's just… Awk-weird."

"Right… You know you can look, right? It's not like I'd strip right in front of you." Shego insisted.

Kim turned just enough to see that Shego had dropped her towel already, though facing away from the redhead. Flaring bright red, Kim quickly snapped her head back into position, too embarrassed to react to the lilting laughter coming from her rival.

"Made you look!" Kim ignored the playful prodding, trying to get a better feel of the room around her. The peach color she'd seen before was really just a light cream under a midday sun. It was large, lavish, and generously decorated with multiple armoires, desks, and dressers fit for queens. Nothing in it made her think of Shego, as much as she couldn't get the sight of her backside out of her mind. No blacks, no greens, no obvious collections of stolen merchandise or paintings.

_I wish I had a… Butt… Like that,_ Kim thought sourly, her mind drifting from the setting in a complete three-sixty. She'd only seen the gentle, pale green, curve that lead to her sculpted ass before she'd turned away, but it was enough to instill envy in the redhead. She'd always thought that the cat-suit wasn't leaving anything to the imagination, but she would admit to being wrong there.

"Okay, I'm dressed," Shego announced behind her. Kim's head remained stiffly away from the woman. "Oh, come on, you think I'd pull the same trick on you twice?" She asked, walking out of the dresser and towards the bed.

"Yes." _What did we do that night?_ Kim thought, as her thoughts on the woman's figure went progressively more sexual.

"Well the least you could do is stand up to leave the room, then." Shego huffed, moving around the bed and into Kim's vision.

She was actually dressed this time, thankfully. Simple blue jeans, a tight green shirt, and a leather jacket slung loosely over her shoulder. Kim still blushed, keeping from meeting her eyes by throwing her gaze across the room again.

"I don't think I can, actually…" She muttered, hardly loud enough for Shego to hear it. "I might pass out."

"Come on, you're still going on about that little burn on your back?" It was said honestly enough that Kim wheeled on her, scowling up at the woman.

"It goes from one side to the other! And it's settled in this position, so if I move it'll-"

Shego rolled her eyes, cutting Kim off. "Yeah, I get the picture. You bled enough on my bed, thanks a lot." The older woman turned and left the room with a sigh. "Let me go get the ointment."

"Ointment?"

* * *

Several minutes later, Shego gently turned Kim over, pressing her flat against the bed on her stomach. Despite gentle actions, she never stopped ribbing the girl, going as far as pretending to cry like a baby as she settled Kim down.

The worst comment came as she was getting ready to straddle Kim's hips. Crawling over her legs one-by-one, Shego had the nerve to remark, "Nice ass, Princess," before dropping down unceremoniously on said body-part. With the way her hips grinded down, the only way she could have been more gratuitous was if she pulled off her pants first.

"Shego, I swear…"

Shego just rolled her eyes again, picking up the bottle of ointment beside her. "Fine, spoil my fun."

"I was drunk, I have a boyfriend, it was a one time deal. What more do you need?" Kim asked flatly.

"Need your shirt off, for starters." Shego answered.

Kim's face contorted in shock, almost painfully. "What?"

"Shirt, off. Doctor D.'s Magic Burn Rub may turn into a airborne toxin when reacting with cotton. Symptoms of toxin may include swelling of the eyes, bleeding through your ears and nostrils, upset stomach, and death," She read diligently, word for word from the back of the package. Just to rub it in, she held the bottle out in front of Kim's sideways head, letting her read the package.

"You're trying to kill me for all the stuff I said, aren't you?" Kim asked.

Shego laughed musically against her ear. "Oh no, the changing thing, that pretty much got you back for that. Getting you to strip, and admit I saved your life, that's just a perk."

"You're sure this stuff works?"

"Trust me, if I wasn't, I wouldn't have it, and I sure as hell wouldn't use it."

Kim rolled her eyes, sarcastically replying, "Like you actually use that stuff?"

"Well, you ever stopped to consider that maybe, what with the ability to melt metal, I might burn myself sometimes?" Shego replied, matching her tone, as she tugged at the hem of Kim's shirt. "You know what molten metal feels like against skin?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Kim grumbled beneath her, lifting her arms to the bed's oaken headboard nonetheless.

She wasn't likely to admit it, but she was thankful this was Shego instead of Ron. Shego's experience around burns and wounds showed, even sliding Kim's shirt up her torso. She was careful around the charred flesh, yet moved quickly enough to show that she was well aware that Kim was still spending every moment in pain.

Shego was trying her hardest not to let her own trepidation show, chewing on her lip as she tossed the tee off to the side. She'd had her fair amount of flings before, but Kim was **the** forbidden fruit, a match to the villainess in almost every way, and perfect in many.

Even marred by the wide wound, her back was a delicate milky-white, showing few imperfections Shego hadn't put on her herself. Acting of their own accord, her hands traveled up, tracing Kim's sides gently, dipping into the curve of her stomach, over her ribcage, and along to the sides of her breasts.

"Shego, please… Don't." She whispered beneath her, taking an unsteady gulp of air.

"Come on, Princess, we shared something." Shego purred back. "You can't deny all of it."

Kim squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, and Shego pulled her hands back. "We didn't 'share' anything, and you said you wouldn't speak of it again. I'm trusting you, Shego. Just being here, I'm trusting you, more than you might deserve. Just like you're trusting me not to elbow you and go for my Kimmunicator."

"So you found it then?"

Kim nodded. "Everybody hides it in the top drawer. I haven't touched it, but they're going to come looking for me."

Shego, careful now not to touch the unmarked flesh, spread some of the clear gauze on her fingers, and started tentatively rubbing it over the wound. Kim sucked in a sudden breath of air, but was otherwise silent as she worked. "Well, it's not like I can stay here anymore. Nice place though, I could probably get top dollar for it."

Kim mumbled into the pillow in response.

"I know, Princess. I don't expect little-miss-goody-goody to rat me out, but things are getting a bit too hot here for me. I can't count on Nerdlinger not to be tracing you here, for one thing, and those guys with the guns aren't going to be too happy, either."

"Guys with the guns?" Kim repeated, shifting her head to peer at Shego with the side of her vision.

Out of habit, her fingers ducked under the palms of her hands, and Shego nodded. "Yeah, 'guys with the guns'. You really do have bad luck, Kimmie. Anyway, I see you, running off to help some poor fools, and no more than a block away is this guy waving a Kalashnikov around."

"A forty-seven?"

"None other. So I…"

* * *

Shego slowed her bike to a stop behind an old church, one of the few remaining landmarks in the city. Thanks to some incredible speed, which came at the cost of an unneeded racket, she could just see Kim tight-roping over a downed pole in a far-off lot. More importantly, she could clearly see the man, now completely sure that he'd noticed the teen hero, standing in a narrow alley with an assault rifle.

She wasn't the least bit worried, or the least bit focused, and just regarded him for several moments as her thoughts ran in circles in a loop. She'd asked the same question to herself, starting just as she entered the city on her bike, and it hadn't got out of her mind yet.

_What would I do if I 'had' Kim Possible?_ She thought once more. This time, unlike so many different scenarios that included sweat, frustration, and a lack of clothes, she thought about the romance. She'd never romanced a woman before, much less someone as undoubtedly hard to please as Kim.

_Dinner in Florence or Rome? The skyline of Tokyo at sunrise? A week or two in Bangkok? What would Kim like?_

The man, still trying to tell what Kim was doing, didn't notice as Shego hopped from her bike and walked calmly from the church's shadows. He didn't notice the entire time it took Shego to walk silently up to him, only when Shego had struck him suddenly in the back of the neck.

It took practice to get that blow just right, but with Shego's experience, the man crumpled to the ground. His A-K clattered beneath him, and Shego stepped over to inspect his weapon and valuables. She pocketed his I-D and a business card, both of which she found in his wallet, and tossed the ammo clip, ejecting the round still in the gun.

They were real bullets, and there wasn't a natural-disaster force in the civilized world that would carry them. Another thing she noticed was the letter in his hands, as nondescript as a electric bill. She left that, careful not to disturb it.

Knock a man out, and he's likely to get up, brush himself off, and pretend it never happened. Start taking important things, and you wind up in shit-loads of unnecessary trouble.

_Is it really worth it?_ She asked, stepping around the next few buildings to where Kim had been. Her sandwich was still there, sitting on the roof.

_Well, we're married, aren't we? She… Kind of… Knows, I guess. And it's not exactly 'risking the perfect friendship'. "We don't even like each other," after all._

_And then she'll ridicule you for trying… Unless… Well, we both know what we did, so she can't say a word against me if she's already done it._

The aftershock spread evenly under her feet, and experience with destroyed lairs helped her quickly regain her balance. She could hear the shrill cry of children in the background, covered by heavy Italian accents, and a quick order from Kim.

_Great… What sort of shit did you get yourself into this time, Pumpkin?_

* * *

"… And then I saved you." Shego finished.

"Okay…" Kim replied, pondering what Shego had said for a moment. "So, you see me running off to help someone?"

"Yep."

"And you see this guy with the AK."

"Mmhm."

"So you knock this guy out, and then you save me?"

"Exactly." Shego finished, obviously quite happy with her story.

"So how'd you get me out?" Kim asked.

Shego raised an eyebrow. "Burned you out." She stated simply. She was still sitting on Kim, still kneading the ointment into her back, earning an appreciative moan every once in a while.

"Not 'out', out here," Kim specified.

"Ah… The guys who helped me save your ass found a blanket, so we wrapped you up and threw you on my bike." She answered, finally finishing her massage, though careful not to touch the bottle again.

"A bike!" Kim nearly screeched.

Shego rolled her eyes, rolling off Kim, her hands held in the air for safety. "Of course not. The blanket part was real though, but I'll need to head back to get my bike."

"With this hole in my back, I'm surprised they didn't airlift me out. If you even thought of putting me on a bike…" Kim muttered as Shego headed for the adjoined bathroom she'd originally showed up from.

Her reply was a poorly hidden smirk. "What hole?"

Shifting to watch the woman leave, Kim had her mouth open before she realized that she was sitting on an elbow, and her back, though numb, was strangely comfortable. She stretched a hand back, feeling a slick ooze covering the entirety of the wound. It seemed to stretch over the charred flesh, holding it together.

She shouldn't have been surprised, with Doctor Drakken's occasional reputation for brilliance, but she couldn't help it. It was better than the gauze Global Justice had hooked her up with, far better, and most definitely illegal, despite its uses.

"It might take a few days for the scar to die down." Kim could hear Shego start the sink behind the corner. "But you're going to want to take a cold shower pretty soon. I mean **cold**." Her head poked out from the doorway. "Don't let it touch anything either." She suggested, eyes lingering, before lowering slightly. "You want to roll over a bit, Princess?"

Kim silently complied, giving her rival a questioning glare. "Why?" As soon as the word left her mouth, she noticed where Shego's eyes were pointing, and clapped her free hand over her breast, her face beet red and eyes wide. "Shego!"

Shego chuckled liltingly, further confusing the teen. She'd never acted this way before, not with all the innuendos that Kim had long since picked up on, or the often overly-friendly manner that had confused Kim before their Canadian night. She'd gone far past flirtatious since they'd met last.

"Can't blame a girl for trying," Shego purred. "The shower's free. Bandages are at the top of the medicine cabinet, and I'll grab you some clothes that should fit, then I need to go grab my bike. Should take an hour, maybe."

"Thank you," Kim replied, sounding grateful, but still irritated. Several moments of sitting and staring at each other, before Kim started feeling awkward, passed until she realized that Shego had no intention of moving or turning away. "So, let me guess, now you want some sort of reward?" Her tone switched to downright vicious.

Shego didn't move, she just raised an eyebrow.

"Fine, get your fill. It won't happen again."

The injured teen picked herself off the bed, dropping the arm that had been covering her breasts. She walked determinedly towards Shego, intent on getting her point across. The point being that they were over, and nothing would happen between them.

She expected Shego to glance down, but the villainess never took her eyes from the scowl that Kim had plastered to her face. Her expression, calm and patient, never dropped either. Kim found the low smirk annoying, and stomped past into the bathroom.

Kim's mind was drawn from her annoyance with Shego when she stepped into the shower several minutes later, and, turning the water on, found out why Shego had emphasized the word cold so much. To her credit, she only blacked out for several minutes.


	8. Italy 3

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Apparently, I never gave the waiter an accent... Oh well. Most the edits thus far have just been switching words around in sentences so they flow better, or slightly clarifying sentences. I'd also like to remind everyone reading that if they're enjoying the story so far, they can help out a lot by filling out the survey for my college class that's linked on my profile. If I get 150 responses to that, I'll have the time to write more Canadian Wedding and other stories. **_~VLU_**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

Shego learned the 'bad' news when she returned an hour and a half later, her bike loaded in the back of her Jeep. Kim was still playing the part of an unhappy guest, scowling from the couch as Shego entered. Neither of them had truthfully expected the younger girl to be there when she returned, but there she was.

Kim had called Wade when she was decently dressed to assure everyone that she was fine, figuring they still expected her to be helping in the quake zone. She wasn't disappointed, no one had even realized she was missing.

Wade told her that they needed to talk when she returned, which she promised to do later, before calling in a ride. That was where her joviality ended.

"So… Until they sort out whatever in America, I'm not allowed to return. Wade said maybe a few hours, maybe half a day."

Shego had to laugh at that. "Ah," She said, as if solving a puzzle.

"What?"

"They left you high and dry. Their precious princess, abandoned." Shego joked. Kim scowled, but turned away instead of answering, her expression almost downtrodden. Almost as if Shego was partially correct.

It didn't help Kim's mood and it only took a few minutes of her sulking before Shego got to regretting her constant ribbing. She suggested going out somewhere for dinner after a few uneasy moments of silence.

"I don't have any money on me." Shego felt like slapping herself in the face.

She settled on just rolling her eyes and replying, "So? I'll pay."

"No thanks. I don't know where your money has been." Kim responded glumly. That sounded like the true heart of the problem to Shego, though the ungrateful tone made her think twice on her regret.

"That's all you're worried about? Blood money?" Kim sent her a quick 'not-in-the-mood' glance, and sunk back into the sofa. "So what, you'd rather I just sit on my money instead of maybe passing it down to the working class? The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor?"

"That's not what I meant. It's just-"

"Wrong? C'mon, Kimmie. Either we go and make some chef's life with an expensive banquet, or… Well, who knows?" Shego smirked, pressing the points she knew Kim couldn't refute. "Maybe, in this economy, they'll break even and keep on working, maybe they won't."

"I don't want to live in luxury on something you made by making someone else miserable," Kim growled back at her. The redhead rubbed the bridge of her nose to combat the growing headache, something that seemed to be more and more chronic the more time she spent with her spouse.

"What's the difference?" Shego almost whined, sounding just as exasperated.

"What if everyone felt the same way as you, Shego?" She shot back, barking much too sharply for Shego's tastes. It was annoyingly chauvinistic, same as always.

"Everyone does."

"They do not! Think of it, every decent programmer starts to funnel money from banks, every laborer winds up robbing people instead of doing anything, every C-E-O…" Kim tapered off, blushing in embarrassment, and could feel Shego's smug grin above her, even if she couldn't meet her eyes. "Okay, bad example on that one. But you think they get richer because of that? No, everyone loses."

"Fine, you're right." Shego replied quickly, her grin dissolving just as fast. She didn't feel like arguing, not with Kim's attitude. There was no fun and games meeting her at this level, just constant frustration and agitation. "I've got some money saved up from my hero-ing days, what if we use that?"

"How do I know it's not stolen too?" Kim asked, shooting a suspicious look up Shego's way. She'd never heard the older thief turn sides that quickly. She quietly watched, trying to tell if she was lying or just tired.

The lines on her face said tired. "Because I worked two years in some crappy fast food joint to earn it and pay for school." She responded resolutely.

"But how do I know?"

Shego shook her head, growling in frustration. "Because I just admitted that. If you feel like coming, I'll be waiting outside," She finished, brushing past her rival on her way to the door. This was a bad idea, she admitted. Was even the great Kim Possible worth the frustration?

Kim watched Shego leave from beneath furrowed brows, trying to understand the villains perspective even in the slightest. All she could come up with was that in all their years, the amount of times Shego had talked about her past could be counted on one hand.

Even if she didn't understand her in the slightest, she still couldn't honestly say she didn't know a thing about Shego anymore. She knew, though still suspected it to be a lie, that Shego had worked in a crummy fast food job to pay her way through school.

That, she told herself, was the entire reason she rose from her couch to follow her wife.

* * *

"I feel wrong, not going back to help them," Kim admitted, stepping lightly down the cobble-stone stairs that lead to a over-hanging terrace. The sea was spread out beneath them, the deep blue waves crashing against the dark stone; between their eternal struggle, a thin white foam. She watched the clash in the dying sunlight, her eyes clouded by thoughts of her own rival whom she seemed destined to clash eternally with. "There could be people out their dying this very second, or sleeping in rags where their home once was. And I'm out here eating ice cream…"

"Well you had nerd-linger call up ol' bushy-nose, and he told you to get lost. So just eat your damn ice cream and quit bitchin' about it." It was very odd to have said rival be trying to comfort her, in her own way.

"Nerd-" Kim had to cough awkwardly at the language. "His name is Wade. And we could be doing something, you could be help-"

Shego vehemently shook her head, barely missing her own bowl of frozen yogurt with her long locks of hair. "No way. I brought enough trouble on them already, bushy-nose said the next time he saw me he'd call the military on my ass."

"I guess, but-"

"We should be doing something. You feel wrong. There are people in need." Shego finished for her, listing them one-by-one like they were a grocery list. "Princess, you've been repeating the same thing for the last hour. Look, if it's that big of a deal, when we get you home I'll go ahead and give them some cash."

"I guess…" Kim relented, having felt that she'd pushed the 'blood money' subject to its fullest. "Which charity?" She asked suspiciously.

"Charity? I was just going to hand it to the town treasurer, maybe leave it in town hall somewhere. You know how much charity money actually gets out of those charities?"

Kim, if just for a second, was struck speechless, and turned back to the ocean view instead of replying. She liked this little place. It smelled like salt, sure, but not nearly as much as some coastal fortresses she'd been in. The breeze was cool, it was quiet and clean, save for several gulls that she could hear at the end of the little cove. It was nice, just like Shego had told her it'd be.

Maybe there was some hope for the villain, she thought, though she kept her eyes focused outward. She couldn't help but tense as Shego took another step forward though.

"It's nice, isn't it?" She asked, standing almost awkwardly beside the teen. She didn't really know what else to say, didn't know what to say to get the girl to even remotely trust her. Everything else, every attempt she'd made to get Kim to open up to her, had been met with a dismissal.

"Yeah," Kim agreed silently. She glanced once more out over the sea, before turning to look over her shoulder, and up the stone-path into the quiet little town behind them. It'd been built into the very side of the cove, some buildings at the top, while others spread out halfway down towards the water, nestled against the rocks. They were nice old buildings too, none of the 'urban trash', as Shego had so eloquently put it, cluttering the rustic feel. "How'd you find this place?"

"I rested off a few old wounds here once, before I got involved with Drakken." She paused a moment, eyes scrunching curiously. "Drakken's business, rather. No involved with Drakken persona-"

"I get it." Kim said. "I might have thought you were, once, but that just seems like a long time ago."

Shego nodded blankly as Kim took another spoonful of her frozen yogurt, a curious look once more gracing the villain's features. "Hmm… And here I thought you always knew I was a Grade-A dyke." She stated bluntly.

With a squeak, Kim froze, her eyes wide as saucers. Her language seemed to have a worse effect on the girl than showing up in front of her nude. Kim hardly even noticed when the little spoon disappeared into her mouth and down her esophagus.

* * *

"Reservation for Kim," Shego said, leaning brashly against the counter for the, almost quaintly-sized, restaurant.

"_Scusi?_" The man on the other side of the counter asked, his eyes taking a second to light up. Kim blamed it on the low tone Shego used, a eternally sarcastic tone that threw most people off when greeted.

"Kim. K-I-M, Kiiimmm."

"Shego!" Kim scolded her. "He doesn't speak English, he's not a child."

"_No, no. _I speak _Inglese_, I did not catch the name." He said in an accent so thick, he could have still been speaking Italian. His clever silencing of the argument before it could begin went unnoticed. "Missus Kim?"

"That's me," Kim replied, nodding happily.

"Us." Shego interjected sharply, earning a odd glower that mixed embarrassment and anger from Kim.

"Very well, right this way, please." With a disarming smile, he stepped out from behind the counter, two menus in hand.

They followed the sharply dressed man through the restaurant that hid its true size behind carefully manicured plants and rustic patios; three levels of beautiful, if worn, architecture lit more for romance than function. Eventually he sat them at a table on the highest level, hidden partially by overhanging vines that stretched along the walls and into the floors. Their table was on a balcony-styled enclosure, a half-circle protrusion in the wall covered by glass that let them look out over the bay, and down the cliff-side that the building seemed perched precariously atop.

"Fancy glass," Shego remarked as she pulled up her chair, ignoring the waiter, who instead moved to help Kim. "Don't remember that being there." Her mind was drifting, strangely letting her surroundings fade to the back to chew over the same details each and every second. She didn't stop to think about the danger of being out and about, instead returning to Kim's face just seconds earlier. The uneasy flutter of her eyes and near-blush, followed by a stern glance in her direction, though her gaze never met her eyes.

"Thank you," Kim offered graciously as the waiter elegantly helped her with her chair, before returning to his spot. _Is she that ashamed?_

It was something Shego didn't need on her mind, that much she knew. Especially after having had to work so hard just to get Kim to go out, even if Kim still wouldn't look at her without some level of contempt in her eyes. _Just need to keep moving, that's all. Everything will work out… Probably._

"Hey, new guy, is Lisa still around?" Shego asked abruptly, before the waiter could finish asking Kim about their drinks.

"You mean Head Chef Lisandro?" The waiter asked tentatively, visibly trying to ignore her lack of etiquette. Kim glowered at Shego from beside the two. "Mister Lisandro does still work, yes."

"Tell him Sienna's back in town and to cook up something special." She commanded, still not glancing down at the menu.

"Please and thank you," Kim added, smiling apologetically as he left. After he had disappeared around the corner, Kim cut Shego a harsh look. "Shego!"

"What?"

"Manners! People aren't just kids, you can't talk to everyone like that," She scolded.

Shego just shrugged. "I can and I will. You can pussyfoot around everything you want, I want my damn food in the next lifetime." She finished sternly.

The hero could only bury her head in her hands to silence her agitated growl. Everything about her wife was just infuriating; how she treated people, how she handled money, how she just didn't care. "I don't like it," Kim growled after a moment spent in her hands.

"Now, see? Here I thought that's why you were attracted to me."

Whether she was being sarcastic or not, Kim would probably never know. All she could do was sputter, trying vainly to read the cool mask of her wife's face. "I- I am not!"

"Uh-huh," Shego replied, her eyes still pointedly scanning the menu.

Nothing could be more infuriating than the way she didn't even bat an eyelash at Kim while talking, no hint of sarcasm at all. It was closer to her parents talking over the dinner table, only she could just hope that her mother never seriously considered jabbing a fork in her dad's eye.

Unless… _You're just trying to tick me off…_ Kim realized, her eyes narrowing at Shego's.

Shego just glanced up for a half-second. _Now you see what I'm putting up with?_ She thought to her rival.

"Shego, please, just don't." Kim plead.

_Well that took all the fun out of that,_ Shego thought, frowning. "You see what I put up with when you get all 'pushy-hero' on me, _Dear?_" She practically sneered.

"Can't we at least be civil about this?" She pleaded once more. "Look, just try to be a little nicer, and I'll try to be a little more… Condoning."

Shego had to think about it a second, more wary than wavering. It was all she wanted out of the girl, a chance, it just seemed too easy. But then again, it was Kim Possible, she had to remind herself. The only girl in the world who seemed to break out in hives every time she so much as attempted to lie.

"Deal," She finally said, with more than a hint of finality. Finally her wife stopped glaring at her, placated enough to look down at her own menu. _That server sure is taking his damn time,_ Shego thought, doing her best not to growl out loud. She desperately needed something, anything, to take the attention of her, maybe then she'd stop sweating and get a chance to cool off.

"So, Sienna?" Kim asked after a moment of browsing.

_And here I was hoping you didn't hear that._ "Another fake one, dear- Princess." She corrected. "Trust me, you could never guess my real name, though it does start with an 'S'."

"Oh, you're on," Kim said, pursing her lips back into a determined smile, "Sara?"

"Guess again, Princess."


	9. Italy End

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Sleepy. If anyone's rereading this, could you leave a review that says whether the final half of this brings to mind a dark, general area outside of a airport. I didn't set the scene all too well there, I'm wondering if I should go back through and forge it a bit better. Also, do my survey and all that. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

The middle-age Italian chef was a jovial old friend of hers, one who'd taken her in at her worst, and sheltered her despite what the world thought of her, and despite not understanding a lick of English. Years later he was still the same, maybe missing a bit more hair, but he had the same smile and the same hug. The look on Kim's face when Shego had first received both was priceless too.

"He was nice," Kim said, announcing her presence to her contemplative rival.

Shego nodded in response, eyes remaining locked on the moon, high above. Night had fallen while they were eating, and this far out of the brightly lit metropolises, it was beautiful. "Yeah, never changes either."

Stepping up beside Shego, Kim wrapped her arms around herself and shivered slightly, following the older woman's gaze up to the sky to search its depths. Now was the time to tell Shego she wasn't interested, she was taken, she was on the other side of the law, she was straight, and a million other reasons she should be home and as far away from the villain as she could be.

Instead, she could only take a step towards her wife, standing in a comfortable silence, watching the sky. She only looked away from the moon and the beauty that lay above and around them when a coat found its way over her shoulders, the green jacket that had been over Shego's button-down, now laying atop her blouse. Kim wrapped the jacket tighter around herself and smiled, practically snuggling into the unnaturally warm embrace.

Shego was sweating anyway. She knew what Kim was waiting to say, knew the girl far too well for her own good. She knew Kim would say she was straight, she was with that buffoon, she was goody-goody, and she probably wasn't even interested. Not to mention every second she seemed to look younger and younger, and Shego felt old just standing beside her. Was she too young for her? Was it wrong just for that?

"Shego-" Kim started, eyes wide forever after when she found Shego's lips tentatively pressed against hers, and Shego's arms over her shoulders.

For a brief moment all that registered between the two woman was a spark and the feeling of softness. Softness, tenderness, and something unexpected transferred from Shego with just a single brush of lips against lips. Emotion. Kim felt it, if only for a second, Shego's emotions.

The kiss was over as quick as it had started, Kim's face flushed and eyes still wide, and Shego in much the same condition. That hadn't been part of the plan, but it sure shut Kim up. It also shut Shego up too, all she could think of was the pounding of her heart in her ears and the uncomfortable shivering of adrenaline and fear in her veins.

"I am so sorry," Shego stuttered awkwardly. "We should just go now."

"Yeah, we should," Kim returned just as awkwardly. Things were still desperately trying to register in her.

It apparently didn't sound like enough of an apology for Shego. "I don't know what came over me."

The awkward silence permeated for another minute at least, both afraid to meet the others' eyes, before Shego finally spoke up again. "I'll just go call my driver," She said, slinking back away from the redhead, before practically bolting around the corner. _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

Kim sunk to her knees, putting a hand over her pounding heart just to feel it dance. _She kissed you_, she told herself. _Why did she kiss you? And why- why, god, why- did you return it?_

* * *

Shego's 'driver' was more like a butler really, about as exclusive and expensive as one could get, catering almost specifically to the rich and evil. Kim had seen him before, hanging in the background when she would fight the Seniors, but hadn't given his recent disappearance a second thought. Now he stepped outside the limo, opening the door and extending his hand to help Kim out with an air of poise and authority that made her feel not unlike a real Princess. She had a feeling that Shego had brought him in specifically for that reason.

"Watch your step, madam," The wise old man warned as he helped her out.

"Thank you, Je-?" Kim paused, eyes drifting away in thought. Apparently three countries and so many pleasant and helpful people were her limit, memory-wise.

"Jarvis, madam. Is there anything else you would like before your plane arrives?"

"No, thank you. You've done too much already."

"As you wish," With that same regal, if not haughty, tone, he bowed and stepped back, turning to his true employer. Shego waved him off, her air of gloom a sharp contrast to Jarvis' permanently amiable appearance.

The ride to the airport had been like the ride to the village, tense and quiet, filled with misery and regret, at least on Shego's side. Kim felt something like her prom day, and that just served to further confuse her and muddle the questions that had been running through her head. Shego, on the other hand, was taking the silence poorly, cursing herself for her slipup.

Halfway back to the villa she'd decided to drop Kim off at the nearest airport, and with a few quick, awkward words spoken, the redhead agreed. She needed time to think, to reflect on the fact that she had been kissed by her rival, an evil one, and a woman at that, and not only had the earth not opened up with fire and brimstone, her parents hadn't yelled at her and it had, most surprisingly of all, felt good.

Her first and best excuse so far was her treacherous body, but looking at the woman before her now, she couldn't say that with all honesty. It was just confusing.

Shego grumbled under her breath and turned in a sharp one-eighty, facing away from Kim. "Are you just going to stare at me all night? Cause it will get cold here, you know." _She's judging me…_

_Wah, poor little baby, wah._ She let another low curse slip under her breath at her own mocking thoughts.

"Sorry!" Kim yipped quickly, a bit too quickly. "It's just…" She chewed on her words, looking away with that same bashful innocence that had managed to grace her face often this night, entirely lost on Shego since the older rival couldn't manage to look her in the face. Worse yet, Kim couldn't think of a single thing to say, and the silence, mocking her as it was, was getting more and more on her nerves every instant.

_BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!_

Kim jumped at the noise, fumbling in the pockets of her borrowed purse for her Kimmunicator. She had practically forgotten that she brought it up until now.

"He-Hello?" She called as soon as she wrestled the device into a firm grasp, holding it up to her ear despite the fact that it didn't seem to need it.

"_Hi, Kimmie-Cub!"_ Her mother answered, loud enough that Shego could plainly make out the hidden worry in Anne's voice. _"Just calling to check in and see if you were planning to be home for dinner today?"_

"I haven't left yet, but I'll get in as soon as I can, mom." Kim replied, eyes darting up to Shego's back.

"_Good. Italy didn't give you any problems, did it?"_

"No, mom, everything's been fine so far."

"_And what about Shego, did you stop her before she could get anything from that earthquake?"_

For a good several seconds, Kim's jaw hung slack, ears practically ringing from the silence after that accusation. "Actually, mom, she was-" Her mouth felt dry and a mantra of denial rang through her mind, swirling over the words again and again. Staring at her, green eyes blazing and teeth grinding hard enough to break bone, Shego heaved an uneasy breath, the anger and pain seeping through it. "I've got to go?"

"You came here to stop me?" Shego breathed out roughly, her momentarily calm tone hiding a deeper anger. "Not bring me in, find Drakken, or talk, but to stop me? From grave robbing?" In all her life, no tone of voice had ever quite frightened her like Shego's right then.

But still, she couldn't see the problem, only the effect. "So? You were-"

"Helping, Kim. God, I thought-" She huffed out another shaky breath, turning and shaking her head to the absurdity of it. "I thought someone else sent you, I thought you knew me better!"

"What was I supposed to think?" Kim shouted back, matching Shego's rising tone. She couldn't figure out why the villain just snapped over something so trivial.

"You were supposed to think I was human! But no, it figures. I'm just a villain, and you're just a hero. I couldn't possibly have a heart or something, could I?" Shego barked. "And I'm sure the first thing you thought about Canada was that it was my dastardly plan?"

The look on Kim's face told Shego everything she needed to know. After all, the hero couldn't even lie to herself, and it wasn't like the thought hadn't crossed her mind. "Fuck, Princess, you really don't think anything of me, do you?"

"Shego, you steal for a living-"

"And Drakken schemes for one, but he still goes home at the end of the day! He still takes care of his mother and his damn dog!" Biting her lip, Shego paced, her expression a mixture of frustration and anger, mostly at herself. "God damn it, Princess, we're human you know. There's no black and white, good and evil. I came here to do something good, anything at all because I thought I wronged you back there. I thought I fucked up and hurt you, and I can see that I was right."

Kim gasped, but could do little more than stand there, slack-jawed, while Shego paced and vented.

"Here I thought you- out of everyone in the world, just you- might have understood me, even a little. But no, you just married a fucking monster, cause that's all I'm good for apparently!"

"Shego-"

Shego stalked towards the younger girl, anger in every footstep, red flooding her vision. She dug something out of her jacket pocket, gripping Kim's wrist to forcefully slap the item into her palm.

"All you needed to do was trust me, just a little. I didn't ask for anything else, Princess. Maybe you should ask yourself what that means to you, cause it sure as hell meant a lot more to me."

With that, Shego stalked back, leaving her wife staring into the darkness long after the limo's door slammed shut. It took her several long minutes before she managed to pry her fingers open and look at the ring that had been so tightly gripped in her hands, _her_ ring, the ring she hadn't noticed was missing after Shego had saved her life after the quake.

She felt sick.


	10. Middleton

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. I started Canadian Wedding almost three years ago. Whenever I think back on it, I really have to think back, and being that memory is subjective I've always had this odd view of it. For some reason, the longer I let it sit, the more I thought it sucked, but reading over it I don't really see many things I dislike. I'll have to make an attempt as I edit the rest of this to at least try to keep this tone. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

A man, nondescript but for the dirty brown jacket, stepped up to a payphone, eagerly inserting a few quarters before he picked up the receiver. He licked his lips, shifting nervously and glancing across the empty parking lot at every other chance. If someone passed him, they would just see another druggy in a dark lot, though if that was simply nervousness or an ingenious disguise would be beyond them.

"Yo, boss," He greeted the irate voice on the other side of the line, seconds later. "Yeah, 's like yous said, right? My buddy, Cha'lie, he saw 'dose goils 'o yours, 'ight?"

The voice on the other end spoke sharply and harshly, though insults didn't seem to work so well on this particular lackey. Perhaps that was why he'd risen this far, because he didn't know when to be hurt.

"Yeahs, we's headin' down the'a juz' nows to pick ha' up, like yous said." He nodded to the reply on the phone, shifting from foot to foot uneasily. "Yeah, 'ight."

As the lackey returned the receiver, the door off to his side slid opened with a short jingle of bells, spilling even more light from the convenience store over the lighted half of the parking lot. The man who stepped out was heavy and burly, with a piggish face and low eyes that hid a certain intelligence. Accenting his position and stature was the half-eaten donut in one hand, and a tray with two cups of steaming coffee in the other.

"Hey," He called, his voice almost gratingly rough, but sharp and fast. It didn't seem to fit him. "What'd he say?"

"We's gonna stakeout ha' place." His twitchy and smallish partner reply, grabbing one of the cups from the tray.

"Not just rush in there?" His partner shook his head, but was too busy sipping at the caffeinated wonder to respond. "Hmm…" He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been saving, glancing about the empty lot and the dark skyline as they made their way to a equally nondescript car. "You got a bad feeling about this too?"

"Oh yeah," The smaller one responded.

The mountain of a man nodded his agreement. "And what if we find where they're keeping it?"

His only reply was in the form of a hand masquerading as a pistol. "Bam."

* * *

"I must look pretty pathetic, huh?" Kim asked herself, stepping up to her reflection in the mirror. It wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared, maybe because she'd managed not to cry her entire flight, and even caught a few hours of sleep too. Still, there was a sunken look to her eyes that worried even her.

Before she'd fallen asleep, the kind older man next to her had even felt the need to hand her his old CD player. He said it would help, would ease her mind and let her sleep, or something like that. She had the creeping suspicion that it wasn't kindness that had convinced the man to give up his music, but pity. It had helped sooth her soul for now, certainly, but she hated being indebted to someone, and couldn't just give old CD player back to a ghost, since no sooner had she woken up than she found the man had gone, vanished in a plane thousands of feet above the earth.

_Maybe I just thought it all up_, her inner-doubt warned her, though the thoughts disappeared as she splashed cool water on her face and fixed her hair. _Maybe you really don't look that sad, you just feel pathetic enough to pity. What were you thinking?_

_She's a villain, that's what she does!_

_She's human too._ The thought struck her, a sudden epiphany that made the tears overflow from her eyes and gave her the sudden, inescapable urge to retch.

_Kim Possible, saint among sinners and all around good girl, just admitted that she thinks no higher of the woman she married than anyone else calling her a monster._

_She's probably been called that all her life, and I just… What have I done?_

It was little wonder she'd reacted so coldly, so harshly. She had married Shego, she'd sle- Kim balked at the thought of having slept with her, but that itching guilt at the back of her mind wouldn't leave her alone. None-the-less, she'd gotten that close to the woman only to do what everyone else in her life before Drakken had done. Even after Kim had met Lisandro, or maybe, especially after that.

That kind old chef had looked to Shego like a daughter, had trusted her despite what the world had thought, despite having not known her. And yet, she, who promoted peace and love above all else, had practically spit in her face by even insinuating such a terrible crime from the rival that she knew. She'd known her for years, after all.

Before she could second-guess herself, Kim was already pulling her kimmunicator from her purse and dialing Wade. Before the boy genius could even look up to the screen, the video switched off, and Kim held the sturdy blue device to her ear.

"_Uh, hey, Kim, what's up?"_ Wade asked, sounding, oddly enough, out of breath. _"And why the black screen?"_

"Sorry, Wade, in a bathroom right now." The confusion was evident by the silence. "A lady's room."

"_Oh, right. The camera is sealed."_

"And pointing in my ear, just in case you get any dirty thoughts," Kim joked, earning a good-natured chuckle from her friend. "I need you to do something for me, okay?"

"_Of course, what do you need?"_

Even knowing what to ask, she felt some anticipation. Not from what Wade would think, the thought never even occurred to her, but from seeing Shego again. Fear wasn't something she was used to, even with Ron. "I need you to find Shego, okay?" Ron… That brought up a whole other list of problems.

"_You got it. And, Kim?"_

"Yeah?"

"_You might want to clear up your mess in Canada,"_ Wade stated bluntly, quickly causing a lump to enter the hero's throat and refuse to leave. _"Canadian officials are claiming you decked a woman in a overnight marriage parlor, they want you in for questioning on assault and battery. I haven't managed to get any more information than that."_

"Oh," Was all Kim could say, not sure if she should be grateful or afraid for her life. "I'll deal with it. Is that what you've been trying to tell me?"

"_For a while, yeah. And, Kim? Your bus is leaving."_

* * *

Night had fallen and the beauty of Middleton under the streetlights was lost on Kim. Many things were lost on Kim right then, besides the worry chewing at her gut. She didn't notice the obvious tail that had followed her from the airport, idling just a block down from her parent's quiet suburbia house, nor the figure standing in the window of her house watching her trudge her way inside almost three hours past midnight.

Jetlag only served to further her exhaustion, and she immediately headed upstairs to her room, kicking away her borrowed shoes and shrugging off her borrowed clothes before she managed to collapse in bed. Even exhausted, sleep wouldn't come easy for her, and she stood up a moment longer to pull her ring out of her slacks, slipping it on.

She fell back into bed with a muffled thud, her hand up so the moonlight could strike it, just enough so that she could see the glimmer off the silver band. The minutes could tick away for all she cared, but the band of silver refused to let her go.

_Maybe you should ask yourself what that means to you, cause it sure as hell meant a lot more to me._ She fell asleep with her arm carelessly draped over herself, still oblivious to the other person awake in her home, and awoke no more rested then she had been the night before.

Her first day home in what felt like forever passed by about as regularly as she could expect; her dad drank his coffee and read the paper, her mother doted about before rushing off to work, things exploded as her brothers rushed around. After the morning she got used to the idea that even if some god was watching, no one outside Italy was. Her fears that some cataclysmic evil would tear the earth asunder at the very mention of kissing her wife seemed to be completely baseless.

That didn't stop the chewing guilt that was wracking her body and destroying her appetite. She was still going to have to tell her parents, and from the way her mother so casually mentioned Ron, her boyfriend too.

"I'm going to head out, see if I can meet Monique." She said, rushing off when the oppressing feelings got the better of her.

Before she'd even left the house her Kimmunicator was out and dialing. Behind her, her dad called out the friendly warning; "Be back before dinner!"

The seconds ticked away after she finished dialing, her walk urgent and skin clammy as the sweat that seemed to pour off her hit the cool air. The sooner she got everything into the open, the better, she felt. Not that the though made this any easier. If sitting at the breakfast table with her parents had done all this to her, she dreaded coming clean to the boy who had such love and admiration for her. After almost a minute, the ringing silenced, replaced by a low static. _"Hey, KP!"_ Ron shouted in greeting, making her jerk her head away from the receiver. _"We still on for Saturday?"_

"Yeah. You want to get together sometime earlier?" She asked, chewing her lip nervously.

"_Sure. Hey, I gotta run. Zombie Madness!"_

With a final shout, and Felix cheering him on in the background, Ron disconnected. Kim almost felt angry at him, at a conversation that lasted less time than it took for him to pick up the phone, and she would have too, if not for the circumstances. There was the general feeling that she was going to be forgiving a lot of his mistakes because she'd made many that were ten times worse.

_What that means to you…_

It was all wrong. Her life was all wrong since Canada. The way she treated Shego, the way she treated Ron, her parents even. Not to mention she'd almost gotten killed in the last two days, and lied to pretty much everyone she'd ever cared about.

There was only one person in the world, and Kim knew this for a fact, that could help her right now. A sagely person who'd never failed her when asked for a advice, and had never turned her back despite what petty or major problems had been dumped on her lap.

Kim felt some of her stress alleviate just walking up to the sage's house, and crossing the rounded stone path that cut its way through the mangled grass of the yard around her. Even this entrance reminded her of her Shaolin training, and the path to the temple where Kim had received much of her most cryptic advice.

Today it wasn't a Shaolin master's door she knocked on, but the Pearman residence. The answer was the sharp yap of a poodle barking over the obnoxious bass of hip-hop music, which continued for several moments while a man stumbled toward the door from the other side, cursing the dog just loud enough for Kim to hear as he tripped over it.

The door finally swung open, and what greeted Kim was a sight she could almost laugh at. Standing before her was a young man, baggy pants practically down to his ankles, the only thing saving her from a truly interesting sight was his floral-print boxers and a jersey. In one arm was their poodle, yipping her heart away, though practically silenced by the music in the background.

"My prayers have been answered," He said, jutting lower lip curved up in a cocksure grin.

"Nice to see you too, Chris," Kim replied, feeling almost at ease for the first time in a while. This house was always hectic, but in a way, soothing. There was really no way to hear your thoughts over the sound of hip hop and pop played by the warring siblings, both played loud enough to vibrate the floor, just to drown the other out. "Is Monique home?"

He snorted, amused, tossing the dog off behind him to step back and let her in. "Does it sound like she's home?" He asked sarcastically, practically shouting over some rapper or another nearly being drowned out by, what Kim suspected to be, a Disney song.

"You two are going to go deaf if you keep this up." She warned.

Chris shrugged, pulling up his pants and heading off back into the living room. "Well, fuck, helps me concentrate, and damn if calculus doesn't take a lotta concentration." He said with a jovial laugh. As loud and obnoxious as he may have seemed to many, Kim found his charisma a breath of fresh air to her mood. "Guess you ain't here 'ta help me with that?"

"Calculus?" Kim asked in amusement. He'd finished cal years prior. "Naw, least not until I catch up in school. How's the job hunt going?"

"Gonna be a scientist! Fuck yeah!" He shouted, growing closer to the entertainment system in the living room, his voice shrinking under its constant beat.

Kim laughed, jogging up the familiar stairs she found herself at. Chris Pearman, for all his charisma and near-stereotypical appearance and personality, was one of the smartest people Kim knew, and that was saying a lot. She could only wonder how he did it, how he managed to fit in to so many different places while keeping so upbeat. Even going to college, working a night-shift job, and searching, or having found, a full-time position as a scientist couldn't keep him down.

Chris even had time for his sister and her friends. Something like that she found to be next to impossible, even given her reputation.

That infectious charisma left as quickly as it had come, and Kim found herself missing it as she got closer to Monique's room. She knew Monique to be impartial and wise beyond everyone else, but that only made her a little easier to talk to. Kim found herself chewing her lip again as she knocked on the door.

Steeling herself, and knowing that Monique probably couldn't hear her, she opened the door and slipped into the room, careful not to knock over anything as she entered. This house was a far cry for her quiet little home, not only being loud, but dark, relatively, as well as cluttered. Much of it wasn't junk, she knew, like the sowing machines she nearly kicked on her way in, or the weight sets lying around the hallway, but it was everywhere. In some places the walls were covered with shelves full of stuff, and she had to slip under a kayak in the hallway just to reach Monique.

The girl in question was humming and bobbing her head, her attention focused as much on her computer as the music coming from her headphones. Kim felt like scolding the girl for playing her music so loud if she wasn't going to listen to it, but she knew these siblings better than that.

She was half thankful that Monique noticed her within a few steps of her room, and quickly set about muting her headphones and drawing Kim into a quick hug. "Hey, Kim, how's it hangin' girl?"

"Bad, Mo'." Kim replied, returning her hug half-heartedly, then dropping down on the only non-cluttered surface available, Monique's bed.

"I see how it is," Monique said, her mischievously pursed grin lost on Kim. "You only come around to talk when you've got problems…" The accusation was followed up by a short sob and mock-tears.

"No! I've been busy, I-"

Monique cut her off with some laughter, clapping one hand on Kim's shoulder as she stood from her chair. "Chill, girl, just messin' with you." The girl turned back to her computer, taking a few more moments to save and close her windows, design documents from what Kim could see, before finally shutting down her stereo and turning back to Kim.

"'Kay, you've got my attention. Shoot."

"I screwed up, Monique. I screwed up bad," Kim groaned. She leaned back and hit the bed with a huff, covering her eyes with a draping arm. "I- I…"

"So bad you can't even tell me, huh?" Kim's reply to that was a practically nonexistent nod.

"I…" Despite all her attempts, Kim's words kept tapering off to a single, shuddering breath. It was just as hard as she'd imagined, maybe more so, since every time she started she'd think about what everyone else would say, would think, of her. Then she ended up thinking about Shego, the last few days around her. She hadn't even taken any of the credit for saving her, or for helping out in Italy, yet, Kim had still not trusted her. The more she questioned that, the more the started blaming her own petty self.

"GF, let's talk over breakfast, 'kay?" Monique suggested. In all their time together, she'd never known Kim to come to her with a problem she couldn't manage to talk about, so she knew it was bad.

The mess of red hair hidden behind a gray sweater bobbed, her shaky, near-tears, breath coming out much more clearly to the both of them since Chris' music had lowered too. Kim Possible crying. The thought of that alone was sad enough for Monique to take a seat beside her. Tenderly, almost lovingly, she stroked her friend's hair, waiting for the inaudible sobs to subside.

* * *

"You think tha's where it's at?" The man asked his partner, filling his empty stomach on a cold bagel and more coffee.

His partner could only shake his grizzled mug. He was leaning back in his seat, getting a few precious moments of rest, while the twitchy man in the dirty coat kept watch.

"Couldn't be, she hasn't been this way since she got here. Maybe she's dropping it off." Even resting, his suggestions sounded like sharp barks.

"Could be's." He responded. "Looked noi'vas enough gettin' he'e."

His partner laughed, characteristically short and sharp. "You're one to talk."

"Migh' well cowl it in," He told himself, ignoring the quip to finish off the last few scraps of his bagel, washing the tough bread down with the remainder of his coffee.

"Boss said no cells." The larger of the two reminded, not even bothering to open his eyes to tell that his twitchy partner had already pulled his cell phone out. With a sharp curse, he slipped the device back into his pocket. "Just call him later, we'll pick them up tomorrow."

* * *

"Feelin' better?" Monique asked, placing the cup of tea in front of the redheaded hero, who could still only nod in response.

She knew well enough that that was only half true. After all, she'd known her friend for far too long to not tell when her comparatively normal eyes were actually her equivalent of red and puffy.

For once, the Pearman household was entirely silent, not a drum or reverberating bass-line to be heard in the entire house. Kim sat at the hastily-cleared kitchen table, with Monique doting over her like the good friend she was, and Chris hanging back at the door to the kitchen, arms crossed and lips pursed.

"Want me to kick somebody's ass?" He asked, before Monique shooed him off.

"If I get a name, you can have my leftovers," Monique answered, her tone holding back veiled hostility and open threats.

Mo' quickly took her seat in front of the distraught teen, grasping both her hands in a soft grip, and practically willing the heroine to look in her eyes. "C'mon, girl, WTM?"

The expression Kim gave her was heart wrenching, eyes lowered, lips pouting, looking somewhat like an adorably sad puppy. "I screwed up, Mo'. She only wanted me to trust her, but I-"

"Wait- Wait, girl. Start at the beginning."

Kim nodded. "Ron and I went to Canada to stop Drakken," She started. "But it wasn't Drakken we were worried about. Shego tossed the place, blasted most the mountain."

"Mhmm," Monique said comfortingly.

"She'd gotten drunk I guess, doing hard shots up in the mountain. She called me out, challenged me..." Monique nodded, though her lips were pursed in disapproval. She knew where this was going, and knew full well that Kim couldn't turn down a challenge. "Next thing I know, I'm waking up in an apartment in Vancouver with this…"

She opened her hand and it clattered out over the table, wobbling slowly to a stop between them. The same silver band that had caused her so much trouble over these last few days. It would probably be the death of her, if not responsible for the most frustrating times of her life.

Monique picked it up, turned it over, read it, and turned back to Kim to find her head hidden behind her arms, face pressed down onto the table. Monique's eyes were understandably wide, but she managed to lick her lips and calm herself. This was clearly not the time to judge, nor the time to ask the girl what the hell she was thinking, as it was quite clear that she wasn't.

"Keep going," She ordered, tone stern.

"We met up in Italy during the quake over there. I thought she was looting," Kim practically pleaded, "I was so stupid!"

"Why?"

"Because she's not like that. She doesn't steal from people who can't afford it, she doesn't take advantage of these situations." She huffed disgustedly at herself. "And Shego was so nice to me. She saved me, she took me out to eat, showed me her friends… Yet, I thought she was grave robbing. Now **she** thinks **I **think she's a monster. I'm no better than anyone who's ever called her a monster just because of her job, or even made fun of her because of her skin."

The last part caused Monique to pause, trying her best to put this situation into something she could relate to, though it didn't seem to help. She had never had to deal with racism here, especially not mutation-caused racism.

Mo' had to stop and think for what seemed like ever to her. This wasn't some little problem she could just dispense advice to, just the wrong mention of Shego could get someone thrown in jail. Not to mention Kim's parents, if they found out that Monique had kept this from them… And Ron, it'd crush his poor little heart.

But there it was, and with her mind, it clicked in two seconds flat. All the years Kim and Shego had fought, all the frustration they had caused each other, and the times they'd attempted to best each other. Even the quips she'd heard about. And now, to hear Kim crying across the table from her, but not over Ron, not over her parents, or the authorities.

"GF… You're gay for her." Monique said flat out, unbiased and unwavering.

"What?" Kim shouted, shooting up in her chair.

"Face it, girl. You came for my advice, and there you have it." Regardless, she laid a soothing hand down on one of Kim's, and looked her hard in the eyes again. "You **should** be worried about what the cops think of you getting lovey-dovey with the most wanted woman in the world. That is, if they get to you before your 'rents skin you alive, after Ron has a heart attack."

If anything, she looked even more afraid now, but still not over what Monique felt she should be. "I am!" Kim protested.

"Maybe," Mo' relented, "But this would be a lot easier if you weren't gay for her."

"Can you stop saying that?"

"Fine," Monique threw her hands up in peace, "This would be a lot easier if you didn't **have feelings** for her."

"I don't." She insisted. "I love Ron, and I don't want this to hurt him."

"But if Ron was Mister Right, you'd be here asking how to keep him."

"I don't know what I'll do when my parents and the world find out."

"They aren't priority _numero uno_ either," Mo' pointed out. "I know you, girl, I know when you're hurtin', and where the hurt is, and right now, that hurt ain't on the world, or your boy. That hurt is right there," As she spoke, she leaned forward, putting a finger down on Kim's chest, right above her breasts. "And that hurt is about her."

"I-"

"Hold up, I ain't done yet. I don't know anything about this woman, why you feel for her like you do, or whether she deserves your pity or my scorn. But, girl, you'd have to be stupid not to have noticed the effect she has on you." Monique leaned forward, once more locking her gaze on Kim's. She had a power when she was like that, a charismatic power, not unlike her brother's, to influence the very soul of whoever she locked eyes on, and she was using it. "But it sounds to me like you're the one who's wronged her, so I don't really care.

"Now, you know what you've got to do, who you've got to be speaking to. And priority number one does not include your BF or your 'rents, got me?" She finished, but kept her gaze locked until Kim, silent of her protests for now, nodded meekly.

"But, I'm not-"

"GF… KP- Kim, look at me, good. I'm not the one you've got to convince that you're not gay, now am I?" Kim swallowed the lump in her throat, but it was clear that Monique's words had gotten through, for the most part. "I've done my own share of experimenting, so you don't have to be worry none about me."

"You've..?" Kim's eyes practically bulged from their sockets before. She had never considered the topic before, but she'd never had a reason to suspect Monique of doing anything like that. Monique may have never been prim and proper, but- Where did she even find someone to do that with?

"You really want to hear about it?" For once, the heroine wasn't even sure she did. She couldn't nod, but couldn't shake her head either. Monique took that as a sign to continue, leaning forward with a mischievous grin sporting her face.

It took time, it took skill, and it took the help of her best friend, but before the morning was over, Kim's mind was finally off her troubles, and focused on keeping her sides from splitting.


	11. Go

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. There was the odd sentence that did not express what it should have. That is fixed now. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

"_Dinner, tonight? I kinda have plans already…"_

"Please?" It was her honest opinion that a girl should not have to beg to have dinner with her boyfriend, especially not a boyfriend of an entire year already.

"_Okay, anything for you."_ But, Ron was always like that, just by asking, he'd agree to put off anything to spend time with her.

It had been two hours since she'd called him for dinner, and, as was normal for the season, the sun was already dipping lower on the horizon. The sky was alight in reds, oranges, and purples, the ground was beginning to darken, and Kim, very much alone at the moment, was starting off on the walk home. She could have taken the car to the restaurant, but she'd been expecting a walk home where she could talk with Ron, tell him what was up and try to convince him not to hate her for it.

Instead, she found herself kicking the sidewalk idly outside the Stoppable residence. _Now or never,_ she told herself, walking up to knock on the door.

After a few seconds it creaked open, and the ever-amiable Mister Stoppable looked up at her with a smile. He had a natural smile that was entirely unassuming, no one ever saw it as anything the next man wouldn't have, or the next man after that, but that was part of its charm. He was the American everyman, sweet, loving, charming, and entirely down to earth.

That was why Kim felt herself smiling when he answered the door for her. "Ah, Kim, come on in. You know you don't have to knock."

"Sorry, Mister Stoppable, force of habit." She replied, stepping inside the house that suddenly felt much more imposing and monolithic. It should have been a normal day; Hana, sitting where her father had been playing with her in the lounge, Mrs. Stoppable cooking dinner in the kitchen. A part of her insisted that it was normal, and nothing had changed. She just needed to make Ron understand that.

"You look lovely today, Kim." He said, remarking on her silky, black, button-down blouse and slacks. She smiled a bit wider, the man knew when to compliment too. "Going on a date?"

Kim nodded, but her smile pursed into a half-frown. "Yeah, with your son, an hour ago." The everyman swallowed uncomfortably, stepping off to the side to his daughter.

"I see… Well, last I heard he was upstairs preparing for his college courses. You can just let yourself up." Her glare followed him as he scurried off back to his daughter.

"Men…" She growled as she ascended the stairs to Ron's room. It was a far cry from Monique's house, closer to her own really, though that was to be expected when their mothers' got together on weekends to convince their fathers' to clean their respective houses.

Clean, sterile. She didn't really like clean and sterile. Kim liked being hectic, she liked not worrying about where her shoes were, and that was probably most surprising since she was so obsessive about everything else, like what people thought. What Ron thought…

Thinking of the boy, she slipped into his room without knocking, quietly as she could, to find out what he had been up to for the past two hours since she'd called him. She wasn't surprised to find his feet sticking up over his bed while his torso lay on the ground, a work-book held firmly above him. Adorning his head was a pair of headphones, linked to an old tape player, which she could guess was loaded up with more schoolwork from the casings lying around it.

"Rufus, give us a minute?" She asked the mole-rat that sat on the bed above Ron, munching away happily at the bag of chips between the two.

Chattering eagerly, Rufus nodded and hopped off the bed, bounding past Kim in a blur of pink nakedness before she shut the door behind herself. That left just the two of them, both equally unaware of the others presence.

Kim couldn't focus. Sure, she felt better than she had before her talk with Monique, which was surprising enough since she found out that her friend thought she was gay and had regaled her with a story that would probably shock the entire student body in Middleton. But she also felt so exhausted. This was the first time she'd been back to see her boyfriend since she'd told him she was married in the first place. It may have just been two days, but where was the feeling that every moment without him was agony? Where was the feeling of happiness from seeing her love's face after being countries apart, even?

_Maybe I don't love him,_ she considered, slumping wearily against the door. There was no one watching her, no smiles she felt she would betray without returning, and she finally let herself feel as tired as she looked.

Why was it even bothering her? She considered why she didn't just bury it, say she was sorry, and never speak of it again. She should have done that, that's what she said she would do when she woke up in Canada. So, why was she here?

_Shego…_

_Shego, I…_

_What are you doing? This isn't you, nothing's supposed to bring the great Kim Possible down. Everything you do, you do with everything you are; all your honor, all your soul. Man up to your mistakes, girl, or get out._

Briefly, before raising to her feet and subconsciously dusting herself off, Kim wondered why her conscience was starting to sound eerily like Monique. Not that she could complain, really, but over the past few months Monique had been making her question just what she was doing with Ron. Love was one thing, but driving yourself around in circles without anything to show for it…

Ron, for all his ninja skills, didn't even notice her in the room until she had idled above him, jabbing him sharply in the ribs with one of her shoes. He yelped, took a moment to figure out who was blocking his light, then launched to his feet in one fluid movement.

"KP!" He shouted, wrapping her in a tight hug and pressing his lips against hers. It was a kiss, she knew, and she returned it dutifully. But it was conscious thought that drove her lips, conscious effort, not blind instinct, and that drew her mind to the events of last night.

"Ron," She growled, pushing him back to arm's length with a firm grip on his shoulder blades.

It was just like him to mistake a threatening growl for a sultry one, and she could easily tell with his stupid grin. "Well, hello, sexy," Was his reply, though the charming attitude he attempted was lost on her.

"How long ago did I call you?" Kim asked, to which Ron shrugged.

"I'unno, a few minute-"

"Two hours, Ron." She growled.

"Oh…"

Kim nodded, as if to convey the proper sense of dread he should have been feeling. He had, sometime or another, noticed just how sharp her mint green eyes were, and how thin her gaze had become. Like a cat, a very dangerous, if not sexy, cat.

A year of dating and many, many years of friendship, had given him some insight into the female mind, and he was already expecting a thorough trouncing for losing track of time, especially so terribly. That made it all the more shocking when he found Kim smoothing out his collar instead, fixing the semi-wrinkled sweater he seemed to enjoy some much.

"How much work did you get done?" _You're stalling, and sparing him._ She motioned towards the schoolwork at their feet.

He didn't miss a beat, apparent fear melting into a laughably dorky grin. "I almost understand…" With a chuckle, he quieted nervously. "The first chapter." Then bounced right back into his normally peppy tone. "But after that, a-booyah! College will be smooth sailing."

"Uh-huh," She replied somewhat sarcastically. Kim dropped, picking up the book he had been reading for the past two hours, apparently. _'Introduction To College Life.'_ He wasn't stupid, not half as much as he put on, and she knew for a fact that whatever was playing through those headphones was probably difficult enough to stump her.

"Well, as long as you're getting there." She collapsed onto his bed with a sigh, all the wariness in her body pulling her into the soft mattress. "I called you so we could talk, Ron."

He swallowed, and for a second his face betrayed his suddenly nervous feelings. He offered her the bag of chips, she waved it off. "Good talk? Bad talk?"

"I- I don't know," The heroine- could she consider herself that anymore?- answered. She studied the textured paint of the roof while his brow furrowed. Something was bothering her, but what? "I want to talk about the last few days, about what happened in Italy, and… Canada."

"Okay. I was bummed when you didn't take me. How'd it go?" His worry was written in his eyes, but they were still clear and bright. He'd lost no sleep over any of this, not when she'd gotten married to, or when she'd gone on a date with, or even kissed, Shego. Maybe, in the great balance of right and wrong, nothing she'd done in the last few days did have any merit.

Her mouth opened, hung there, then closed. She considered how Ron was going to react, and knew well enough to sum it into two words, badly, and over.

"Ron, before I say anything, you need to promise to hear me out, and not take this the wrong way. Promise?" She pushed herself up to sit, meeting his gaze, as much as she'd have liked not to, and pleaded.

"Geeze, KP, it can't be that bad."

"Just promise, Ron," She repeated, trying her best not to give in to his casual dismissal.

"Okay, okay, fine." Ron relented. "Now that you've got me curious."

"Ron, I think we should take a break."

It took him a minute to understand the severity of her words, which were only evidenced by her near-quaking voice and the undertone of a girl sick to her stomach. After several minutes of scrunching his eyebrows, his eyes widened in understanding, and with the tone of a man in complete denial, asked; "What?"

* * *

Disappearing was simple, especially with just two days in town and a single bag. She doubted she'd ever use the Italian villa again, so a quick call ended the utilities, a plane was boarded, and that was where Wade started the search. Shego may have had more practice disappearing than he had tracking, but he could count on her to be distracted and careless, and he wasn't disappointed.

It wasn't Shego that made the mistake of using flagged credit cards and checks, but Wade didn't have to know that, only the source of where the tagged objects were used. The source was on a plane, heading into the American Midwest, while serving a tray of crackers to his disgruntled charge in the cockpit. "Anything else to drink, madam?"

"No, thank you. I'd like to be alone with my thoughts if you don't mind, Jarvis." Shego responded curtly.

"Of course, madam," His reply was much more kindly than hers, and with that, he slipped into the back of the plane and disappeared. Shego didn't know where he went when he wasn't doting on her, and she didn't care to find out. As far as she knew, he'd been serving super villains forever, she even heard that he'd catered to Moloch back in the early days.

Now he served her whenever she wasn't working, and probably would until the end of his days. "Jarvis," She asked the empty cockpit, "Was I wrong?"

His voice echoed back, alert, yet distant; "Madam, any person who passes judgment solely on their own point of view is wrong."

"Well, it's hopeless anyway," Shego mused. "She can't see me. She looks and sees a villain, a meta-human, no one to give her the kind of relationship she needs."

Seeds of doubt spread themselves through her mind, stemming from her failure earlier, when she'd gotten so worked up about maybe sweeping Princess of her feet. That whole thing had gone disastrously, in her mind. Absorbed in her thoughts, she switched on the autopilot, giving herself the opportunity to bury her face in her hands and rest her eyes. "I was a fool, too. I wanted her like a trophy, never thought about what she needed."

"Shall I assume, then, that you plan on giving up on Missus Possible and returning to work?" Jarvis called up.

She debated questioning how he could hear her from way back there. "Eh, not yet. I'll decide after a little vacation."

"May I suggest that you have some breakfast while you think, Madam," He suggested. It took Shego a moment to realize that he hadn't gone back to sit in the back, but instead was standing dutifully outside the cockpit door. She couldn't tell whether it was a blessing or a curse to have him waiting on her day and night. Sure, she wasn't alone, but she had to question, with all the ups and downs she'd been going through, whether she really wanted a 'good life'. It would be so much easier to just wallow in pity on a couch somewhere and waste away.

Friends, family, they were all overrated. If only she could really convince herself of that. "No, thanks. I'm not hungry."

"Forgive me, but I must insist."

Shego shifted in her seat, leaning back to look at the sky and the vortexes of wind and water swirling outside the jet's nose. Jarvis was quiet, the entire cockpit was quiet, save for her breathing, and it reminded her too much of the flight away from Canada in Drakken's hovercraft. It, like this, was a mix of inner turmoil, self doubt, and self pity, and if there was anything she hated, it was pity.

"Fine…" She growled after a long moment of oppressive silence, standing and shuffling out of the cockpit. "I swear, you're just trying to fatten me up so I can't fight…"

"Madam, you haven't gained an ounce sit I came into your service," Jarvis replied dutifully. She wasn't sure, but she felt that she should be wary of the matter-of-fact way he said that. Her mind was more easily drawn to the plate of food sitting on one of the tables he stood over, expertly arranged already.

"You mean I'm already too fat to fight?" She asked with a smirk, settling down at the table. Even as she cut into the first bite of food, raising the fork to her mouth, she asked the question that had been on her mind for some time now. "I wonder what Kim's doing right now?"

She bit, chewed, and swallowed, not tasting the food, eyes staring past the butler, past the plane. Then she laughed humorlessly, returning to eating. "Probably with her _boyfriend_ right now."

"_But, Ron! It-"__**I can't just say it doesn't mean anything, can I?** "I just need time to sort this out. You mean so much more to me than she does!"_

"_More? And what's that on your finger then? Your __**ring**__ finger!"_

"_It was a stupid mistake."_

"_Yes, I guess __**it**__ was."_

"Am I to assume that you have no faith in the young Missus Possible then?" Jarvis asked. With one hand he replaced a now-empty plate full of sweet rolls, the other holding a towel draped ornamentally over it, and proceeded to pour her a fresh glass of water.

"Doy, cause of course Kim has the bad-girl image going for her." Shego took a second to finish off another forkful of the hash browns she'd been digging into. "She's the hero, I'm the villain. She doesn't think of me like a relationship, she's made that clear, so she'll just go back to that doofus and I'll go back to… Hell..."

"I hear it's quite cold this time of year." With his never-changing weathered face, she couldn't tell quite what to make of his joke. Jarvis made his occasional quips, but they were all light, short, and forgettable. Pretty much the only thing that kept him from being the most hard-core butler in the world.

"Figure of speech. I've got nothing… Maybe some time back home will do me some good." Shego nodded, her eyes still holding the same look of introspection to them. It seemed to make sense, taking her mind of the girl. She'd already been rejected a handful of times in a matter of days, and even worse, the girl didn't look at her as anything but her chosen profession. "Meet some old friends, try to put this thing behind me like Kim is."

"_Well, you obviously didn't think much about me when you were saying your vows."_

"_That's not fair! I can't even remember that."_

"_Exactly! It lowers your inhibitions, KP, it doesn't turn you into a different person!"_

"_No, but it turns you into a different person. I just want a bit of time to deal with everything, but I'm not going to stand in your way if you want to make everything more difficult."_

"_KP, if you walk out that door-"_

"_Beep-beep-beep."_

The noise quickly followed the slamming door, and Kim fumbled vainly for her Kimmunicator, managing to nearly drop it once. She was back in the streets, and only half an hour had passed since she'd first greeted the Stoppables.

It was an excruciating half an hour though, and fresh tears burned their way down her cheeks, flowing like blood from an open wound. That was just what it felt like, too.

Ron wasn't like that, she _knew_ he wasn't like that. She couldn't think of why he would turn it into as much a shouting match as it'd turned out; couldn't even stop to think that maybe he needed as much time as she did, what with her mind spinning as much as it was.

She finally worked up the will to answer the blinking device, covering her eyes with her palm and drawing in a shaky breath to calm herself as she walked. "Yeah?"

"_Hey, KP… Have you been crying?"_

"No, I'm fine. What is it?"

"_I got a hit on Shego, thought you'd like to know where her jet is touching down right about now,"_ the portly hacker happily informed her. It was the first decent news she'd heard in, what felt like, forever.

Maybe, if she could just face the devil herself, she could make it all up to her. Maybe even have some great epiphany on why everything was so twisted in her life right now. Everything may have seemed fine, but it was her; her, who was running in circles, her, who's brain churned a hundred thoughts out per second, her, who's every thought brought her closer and closer to what Monique had told her, and ultimately, to Shego.

"Thanks, Wade. Can you send me the coordinates and maybe some low-profile transportation?" She asked after another second to steady her breath and squeeze the tears back from spilling over her face.

"Done. Should I-"

"No. No Ron. I want to face her, alone."

* * *

They'd touched down two hours before, landing on the outskirts of one of the largest metropolitan areas on the great lakes area. Go City was a place as much alive at night as it was in the daytime, a place where the civilized retreated or regressed when the sun went down, allowing for all manners of shady activities with only a handful of vigilantes and police left in town to stem the tide of utter chaos.

The back alleys were more a home to Shego than the entirety of Go Tower out on the lake, or even the old house with the crater in back further out from the city. This was the place she'd made her living in the start, her first contacts, and the only scum that was dug in enough to come back to when the going got tough.

Shego wasn't sure anymore though. There was a big part of her that wanted this, wanted to return to crime and the life she'd made, what made her happy. But there was also a part of her, a small one that was quickly gaining power, that wanted her not to step out onto the streets, not to breath in the smell of corruption and taste the greed and avarice that flowed through Go City's alleys like veins from a heart.

She blamed Kim for that part. Or perhaps, she blamed that part for everything to do with Kim. She was going soft, and that redhead was going to be the death of her. Even her thoughts were making jokes now, she realized bitterly.

With her mind firmly set against such thoughts, she stepped out of the shower and dressed, relatively simple garbs for one so known for her cat-suit. Some jeans, a shirt and jacket, and a hat, with her hair tucked behind her ears, and she was ready to go out, ready to prove to herself that if Kim could move on, then she could move on.

"Couldn't sleep, Madam?" Jarvis asked, standing dutifully outside the bathroom. She thought she'd snuck in quietly enough not to wake him.

"Feel like I've been awake for three days, and I've still got another four in me." Shego growled, pushing her hair back into a quick ponytail.

"Madam, you have been."

"Watch the place for me while I'm out," She replied, ignoring his response. Sleep wasn't going to come easy for her as long as that hero was on her mind anyway.

"And if I need to get in touch with you?"

"Call Amber."

As she left the back-alley loft, he pursed his lips and obediently waited. Prime senses from waiting for over a dozen super villains told him that this would end badly, very badly, but he didn't have to have the experience he did to see that.

Amber, as Jarvis knew her, was a local. A druggie, a whore, most likely, and an old friend of Shego's. First or second girlfriend she'd ever had, from what he'd surmised, and a sexual contact for whenever she was in the area. Sure, she was a high-class yuppie as much as she was a druggie, but for Shego to see her so soon after Kim…

Jarvis could only frown and shake his head. He felt sorry for these youths, so young and willing to make bad decisions, just to prove themselves.

* * *

Jarvis was nowhere to be seen when Shego returned, her breath tinged with alcohol, and a slender girl perched over her arm. She giggled, and Shego tried her best to smile in return, more-so when her 'date' began to nibble on her ear and neck.

Shego, not nearly so drunk as she pretended to be, tried her best to welcome the advances that just two weeks ago, she'd have eagerly returned. But _it_ was missing, the spark of danger and sexuality that came from a casual tryst and temporarily lit her ebbing soul.

Amber pushed her back, driving her up against a wall with a _thump_ and a giggle, quickly clasping her mouth over the villainess'. The kiss was sloppy, and should have been halfway satisfying.

_Not nearly as much as Kim's…_ Shego thought, followed quickly by an internal, _damn it._

She couldn't get off her mind how flawed this person was, standing before her, lavishing her with nibbles, giggles, and quickly-discarded clothing. She was so thin, so lanky, with hair a scraggly brown color that stuck out in odd angles and a uniquely Asian-American face that should have been so appealing.

What was it that made Kim so perfect? Why was she so addicted to the taste of strawberry lip gloss and the hint of Italian food when this woman made her feel sick to her stomach? She felt like pulling out her hair, but something made her keep going.

She felt stuck, trapped. Like she was spiraling out of control with each rough bite and probing fingers. Her breath was becoming short, and not from pleasure but from some primal fear that she had lost herself and this was the furthest she could go without having to find her again. Her, herself, the words were almost interchangeable. Kim was there, at the back of her mind, and as much as she wanted to run, to be the villain Kim saw her as and do the things everyone expected of her, she couldn't get away.

Finally the mood was broken, like a hammer breaking through a window, the apartment was filled with the sounds of a gentle rapping on the door. It was timid and weak, but Shego's eyes darted to it like it was a sign from god.

"Aw…" Amber giggled drunkenly, wobbling and falling when Shego pushed her unceremoniously out of the way. She pulled her shirt back on, smoothing her hair down once, and thanked the maker that had decided to gift her with the perfect chance to run away and do something, anything, to keep her from losing her mind. How had this even turned out to be such a bad idea?

Shego hastily flung the door open, only to balk when she saw who was on the other side. The figure looked up, first timidly, only to balk when Amber perched herself drunkenly on Shego's shoulder, her drunken grin very much like that of a Cheshire Cat.


	12. Go Pacific

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. No big changes. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

The wipers beat against the pouring rain, no more water than a smoggy soup that would leave a chalky aftertaste. It was one of the few and rare hard rains that Go City received. After just an hour it was already pooling up at curb sides and falling off the old Crown Vic in sheets.

Besides the rain and the heavy slog being moved with the wipers, the only sound inside was the crinkle of a wrapper as one of the car's occupants bit into a hot dog. The other occupant, the driver, was watching with interest as their redhead mark stepped out of the cab, ignoring the rain and starting off into the dimly lit alley, the pursuing Crown Vic idling just a block down the road.

"He'a we go," He whispered, grabbing the pair of binoculars from the dash and turning them onto their mark as the door in the alley swung open.

Shego, now standing visibly in the doorway, felt her mouth run dry and her pulse flutter erratically as she looked out to Kim. Half of her wanted to pretend that her pants were still buttoned all the way, and that the drunk Amber was not attempting to lick her neck as she was. But, as much as time tried to stop between the two, their gazes locked entirely on each other, it was happening, and mix of surprise, hurt, and disgust reflected in Kim's eyes just made sure of that.

"Kim…"

"I'm sorry-" Kim blurted in response, rushing back into the rain and towards the street.

Shego was just two steps behind her, shoving Amber back and awkwardly jogging after her. "Wait! This isn't-"

"What it looks like?" Kim asked, tone uncharacteristically bitter and sharp.

"God damn it, Princess, would you just listen to me?" As soon as she caught up, Shego grabbed Kim by the shoulder, roughly twisting her around. She instantly regretted it.

Her eyes, even obscured by rain, darkness, and damp hair, they were something Shego had never seen from the girl before. They were so entirely full of hatred, a hatred she'd never witnessed before, not through all the fights they'd been through, or even when the girl had said straight up that she didn't even like her. Hatred tinged with pain, overlapped by a red puffiness that revealed the tears hidden by rain.

"Listen to what? More lies?" She growled, words sharp as her eyes.

Even as the redhead turned and stomped back towards the road, Shego felt her mood sour. What right did Kim have to be angry? She didn't want any of this; Shego was doing her a favor.

"_All I needed was for you to trust me, Kim_!" Kim shouted back angrily.

"You can't just do _this_, okay? You can't say get lost and be mad when I listen!" Shego screamed, voice rising above even the rain that separated and pooled between them.

Kim found herself facing her rival, her wife, neither of them moving, neither choosing to close or increase the gap separating them. She narrowed her eyes through the rain that was soaking them both and growled, "I trusted you, Shego. Just once in my life-"

"You spit me out, Princess." Shego returned, in kind. "You have no right blaming me!"

"No right? 'Til death is my right!"

"No right!" Every word rose, each shout growing more and more into a spitting match, and the anger flared between both women. Their eyes were locked on each other, regardless of the rain that poured on them or anyone who might have braved the elements of the Go City night. "You think I can afford to sit around while you make up your mind?

"You walked out that door telling me you'd never love me, and you were the only one who ever could! You think it's easy being green? You think I don't need comfort too? That I'm fine alone or in the dark? Huh? Never rely on anyone?" Shego shouted. It was the first time Kim had ever heard any sort of confession out of the villainess, and she felt her anger recede into confusion. She didn't know what to think, what to say, even. "Well, I needed you! And you weren't there for me!" Shego shouted, nearly seething now.

"Who have I got now but myself, huh? And now I feel like you're taking that even, and what does that leave me?"

That was the last word Shego felt like saying, and she felt better for it. Despite everything Kim wanted and she had done, she actually felt a little better. It was only a matter of time until the reality set in and she felt sick.

She'd practically cheated on Kim. The one chance Kim had given her, and what was she doing?

Kim was just as torn. The hero couldn't find the black and white anymore, no more good and evil, right and wrong. _I needed you?_

Their eyes refused to turn, refused to look away from each other. Even when a shelf clattered to the ground back in the apartment, and Amber fell outside the doorway, splashing audibly in a pool of rain that was making its trek to the street.

* * *

Bleh. That was the only way to really describe Shego's mood. She was still quite angry at Kim, but she'd also had enough time to see that the girl was also quite hurt, and angry herself. Pride alone dictated that she not give in, and it seemed that Kim felt the exact same way.

Though, driving to the hospital at three in the morning trying to keep a woman from choking on her own vomit had a way of putting their problems on hold for a while. It was nearing morning when Kim finally found Shego out near the vending machines, and the two let the awkward silence reign in. Neither of them was sure what had happened, or what was supposed to happen, or even how they'd let it get to this point. Standing in the parking lot outside a hospital at four in the morning wasn't the way either had seen this happening. Nor waiting awkwardly for the other to say their part.

Finally, and with much awkwardness, it was Shego who broke the silence. "Is she-?"

"She'll be fine. The doctors say it was a drug overdose, and we were lucky to get her here when we did." Kim replied. She wasn't quite sure how to sound or act, so she just came off as tired, which seemed perfectly understandable.

"I should have figured she'd be using again…" Shego murmured. For a second it seemed like Kim would say something, would act on the anger and hurt she still felt when she saw Shego, but she just nodded.

As if their speech could only come in short, awkward or angry bursts, the silence closed in over them again. Shego, sitting on the bench between a pair of soda machines, had been looking away the entire time, not willing to meet Kim's gaze, for once. Though, whether it was out of guilt or anger Kim couldn't quite tell. Maybe, she figured, it was because every time they looked each other in the eye it turned into a fight.

"Shego…" She started, twiddling her fingers out of nervousness and confusion. "I just- I need time." The redhead turned, as soon as Shego moved to look at her. "Time to think. I'm going home."

"Okay, yeah." Shego answered, nodding and watching as the heroine shoved her hands in her pockets and stepped out into the rain.

"Just don't do anything stupid?" She asked as she disappeared into the shadows beyond the hospital lights.

"Whatever…"

Shego settled in, letting an indecisiveness that was entirely against her character grip her. Part of her wanted to see how her old 'friend' was doing in the Emergency Room. Part of her wanted to go home and sleep. The biggest part of her wanted to run after her wife, stop her cab, and take the breath from her lungs.

A half hour later she found herself back at her apartment, wringing the water from her hair. The shelf had been tidied up and her clothes had been cleaned and hung, which just reminded her of how filthy and exhausted she felt. After all the rain, her jacket was probably ruined, her hair felt like it was covered in sand, and a grimy film was present on her skin that would take time to scrub out.

"Jarvis!" The butler stood off to the side, practically appearing in the edge of her vision. He bowed, weathered features accepting her back with the same amiable look he'd held forever.

"Yes, Madam?" He asked in greeting.

"I'm going to bed," She stated, heading up the stairs away from him. "Don't wake me."

Jarvis, though displaying nothing but his kindly metered personality, opened his mouth to stop her. "Madam, if I may be so bold?"

"What" The annoyance was present in her tone, but she stopped in mid-step regardless.

"When you won my services from Sir Senior, I saw a great potential in you, a potential to recognize your mistakes and correct them." She frowned, but he pressed on. "May I just say, Madam, that you fucked up, and you know what to do."

Shego wheeled around, a growl and a retort on her lips, but the butler was nowhere to be found. After a few seconds her snarl ebbed, replaced by a grim smirk. "That bad, huh?" For the third time that night alone, she set her features in determination, jogged down the stairs, and grabbed her jacket. "Jarvis! I'm going out, I'll be gone for a while."

"Very well, Madam." She didn't bother to ask how he appeared this time.

"Get on the line with an attorney, get him to set up a document for Amber." She ordered and she got ready again.

Jarvis could only raise an eyebrow in confusion. "Madam?"

"If she stays clean, give her a couple million or something." That said, the door swung closed behind her and she disappeared into the night.

* * *

It was morning when a man, dressed neat, yet powerful, walked up the round-stone path towards the house. No one was watching, but he exuded a presence that announced his purpose, from his shined shoes to his holster.

He stopped before the door, looking up for any hint of the sun, but finding none at such an early hour of the morning. With a calculated smile the man slipped a pair of shades from his suit-jacket's pocket, slipping them on for added effect. Finally, he turned to the door, which pulsed with a raucous medley of music even at such an early hour, and knocked.

A few minutes passed, then he knocked again. A few more passed before he pounded on the door.

It took almost half an hour and most of his self control before the door swung open and six feet of muscle found itself before a bleary-eyed girl. He stood at attention, looking down his shades at her.

"Huh?" She managed.

"Monique Delaforte?" He questioned in greeting. "My name is Charlie Wilks," With practiced precision a badge was flipped open, "Global Justice. If you would come with me?"

Across town Kim stumbled out of her cab, almost, just almost, having let herself drift off along the way. Her hair was a mess, she felt like shit, she'd been up well over a day, exhaustion dulling her senses and emotions. The heroine couldn't even bring herself to be mad at the cabby for talking so tirelessly about his life while she was in such a mood.

She thanked him, closing the door behind her, and looking up to the precious house that held her bed, only to find herself watching as two men spoke in low tones to her mother. Anne watched as the cab deposited her daughter, and the two turned to regard her as well.

One was a mountain of a man, unshaven, dirty, with a pig nose and squat features. A dirty brown jacket sat over a stretched white shirt, and blue jeans finished off his plain-clothes ensemble. A cop, announced by the badge hung around his neck. The other was dressed almost similarly, but was taller, lankier, and had an average, almost handsome, face. Personable, she would call him.

"Kimmie, welcome home. Did you take care of your business?" Anne asked with a smile. Kim could only nod, not trusting herself to speak. "I'm sorry, I know you're tired, but these two said they need to talk to you down at their headquarters. They're with Global Justice."

Both men, now watching Kim openly, smiled.


	13. Pacific Start

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Typos. Fixed now. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer: **I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

He was normally stealthy, unseen and unheard in all things, but today Will Du straightened his uniform and stood ready as he knocked on the door. It was a special occasion, one that brought him out at the tip of night, and for this occasion, he was well prepared.

The door swung open, a beam of light from inside cutting through the darkness, from the porch to the streetlights shining at his back. He looked up in greeting, meeting the eyes of the mother of his friend and colleague, and, forcing himself to, smiled. Yes, being prepared meant making many sacrifices. Even, and perhaps most importantly, breaking the rules and regulations of fraternizing with civilians. It was, after all, a special family, and thus, a special occasion.

"Missus Possible," He greeted with a light tip of his head and a practiced etiquette.

"Ah, Agent Du," Anne greeted with a more reserved smile, stepping aside. "Come in. Thank you for coming out so late, we just didn't know who else to ask about this, and Kim has always talked so highly of you."

That almost, but only almost, broadened the smile of the normally stoic man. "It's my pleasure. You said this was important?"

Anne nodded, but stepped away all the same. There was, beyond his knowledge, a reason she'd called and asked for him in person, both as a person and at this location. He may have been an agent of a world-wide espionage organization, born and bred to lie out his ass with a smile on his face, but he was also as see-through as glass.

Even as she looked over his youthful features, judging everything about him from the lines in his face, she could tell he didn't want to be here, and she could tell he didn't want her to know that. "I was just wondering if my daughter has done anything wrong." She told him.

The confusion on his face was apparent and honest. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm just worried about her, Will- Can I call you Will?" Anne spoke and asked. From the uncomfortable shifting the young man was performing, it was clear that he didn't like surprises he couldn't adjust for, especially in conversing.

"Yes, please." He settled down, and she continued the pre-ordained talk of a host.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you." As soon as he'd settled down fully, it was Will who, with a fake smile on his face again, and an even straighter uniform, if that was even possible, kept the conversation moving. "You said you were worried about her. Why?"

"Well, your officers picked her up so early in the morning, and I haven't heard anything from her since," Anne explained, trying, for the life of her, a pout that seemed to go right over Will's head. "Anything you could tell me would help."

He was still apparently confused. "I haven't heard about anything regarding Kim coming up, did you get the name of these officers?"

The head of orange locks shook, but Anne wasn't sure whether to be relieved that Kim wasn't in trouble, or worried that Kim was in trouble. "No, they just showed their badges and escorted her off."

"Badges?" Du asked, unclipping the side-holster at his belt. Her eyes drifted down to the weapon where his hand rested, then up to his face, where his eyes were narrowed and his tongue darted out to lick his chapped lips.

"Yeah, gold badges," Anne continued, as if the Global Justice agent before her wasn't tensed and ready for a brief moment of fight-or-flight, "With a building that has two gargoyles on it. Aren't those Global-"

The floor above them creaked, and not a moment later Will, in a flash of blue uniform and tanned skin, was up the stairs, taking them three at a time. His eyes were already drawn to the left as he reached the top, his sidearm drawn, whipping it wildly from side to side before it rested on the door off to his side, Kim's room, he could guess from the décor inside. It was open already, and he could see straight through thanks to the light that had been left on, straight through to where the curtains were fluttering in the wind.

With just a moment spared to look, Will practically leapt down the stairs, jumping over the handrail and back through the foyer, throwing the door open. Only a rustle of bushes off towards the neighbors yard and the gentle free-fall of leaves outside Kim's window greeted him.

The agent stood there a moment longer, back pressed against the doorframe, gun lowered in the vicinity of the neighbor's fence, his eyes scanning the background lighted by pollution and streetlights. Nothing moved, no sign of an attack showed itself, so after another moment, he eased up from his semi-crouch.

"Was that-?" Anne spoke up from behind him.

Will could only shake his head. "I don't know, she ran off before I could get a good look."

_She…_

* * *

She was cursing as she pulled herself from the hedges, already several streets off. Picking leaves from her hair, inspecting the new cut on her t-shirt, her mood already soured from continuous hours on the road with no sleep- there was little that kept her from flinging plasma randomly at anything that bothered to accost her.

"Damn it, Princess…" She growled to the open night. Of course, the one time they might have got some talking done, something actually accomplished, and she had to go and get herself lost.

That didn't sum up Shego's problems in the least. A chewing worry nipped at her gut, something she'd felt only briefly and randomly for the redhead before, and never for anyone but her. It was so much more apparent too, especially since it seemed that her wife was already in a mood, and that was all thanks to her, most likely. At the very least she couldn't get herself in too much trouble, not with her skills.

This Shego tried to convince herself of as she walked down the street, hands shoved into her pockets to protect from the nipping cold. Her only hope was that Kim was still around, and not where she feared she was.

A car slowed down behind her. She heard and felt it amongst the otherwise quiet suburban scenery, but didn't could see its lights, so discounted the preppy Global Justice flagman who would never break traffic laws. _More trouble… The things I do for you, Kimmie…_

She ignored the car, focusing on more important things, like feeling out of her league. Sure, she was the most dangerous woman in the world, and she did have an impressive skill-set that included everything from picking locks to seducing codgers. Tracking down missing heroines was another problem, one she'd normally have left to Drakken, who was still awaiting trial, as far as she knew.

There was really only so many leads Shego knew of and could follow so far. One was Global Justice, who called Colorado home, despite having so many hidden offices that she knew of. Another was their 'visible' branch, their networking and press-releasing headquarters in Pacific City, who's agents weren't spies and carried golden badges that held certain 'privileges'. The last was practically idling behind her, most likely waiting for a stretch of road without street lights to stop her on.

_Fine, if it has to be that way…_

She stopped, not that she'd been walking very fast to begin with, but refused to go another step as much as the car behind her seemed to want her to. It probably didn't like the idea of having to do this under a streetlight, like the one she was standing under. After a few moments the telltale sound of a door clapping open and shut cut through the silence of the night. A dog barked in the distance, but neither occupant of that little stretch of suburbia paid it much attention.

Shego turned, finally facing her tail. She expected something else.

Sure, he was imposing, built like a football player straight out of prison, but he was definitely no cop, definitely no agent, and possibly the only gang-banger in Middleton. The car he was driving ruled most of the possibilities out. A beat up old Acura that probably trailed smoke. No wonder she'd heard it so easy.

"Sorry, buddy, I don't have anything to write with right now. You'll have to get my autograph later." The quip didn't seem to phase him much, not changing the scowl he had in the slightest. She felt like she could take a dive off his lip, with him sticking it out so far, but was far too tired to comment on it.

"We'll see if you're so funny at I'm through with you," The man growled, advancing across the street. _Damn it, another tough talker._ "Where's my sister?"

Well, that threw Shego through a loop. The villainess looked up, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "Eh?"

"Monique, my sister. Where. Is. She?"

"Monique? Let's see… Monique… Monique…" He definitely didn't enjoy the pauses, just a dozen feet away now. Shego could easily see the choker chain he carried, inverted, around his fist. That would definitely leave a mark. "Skinny black girl? About yay high?" She motioned just a few inches shorter than herself.

"Yeah, now where is she?"

"Haven't seen her since I chased Kim around that mall." She told him flatly. "Counterpoint, where's Kim?"

"Huh?"

"Kimmie. You know, 'bout my height, red-head? Has a rulebook shoved so far up her ass she can only speak annoying?" The more she spoke about the redhead, the more Shego seemed to get pissed. Her emotions written on her face, she took a step forward, almost ready to start flinging fireballs or pound him into the pavement without them. "You know, my wife? Where is she?"

"Chill, girl." Monique's brother said, raising his hands passively. He seemed to just realize how dangerous she was to rile up, as much from the anger written on her face as the light green glow surrounding her. "Maybe they eloped." He obviously didn't know how to console a woman though, and found himself dodging small plasma balls a moment later.

He was lucky Shego was exhausted. It showed in her accuracy and power, light green balls of plasma sparking through the air randomly before fizzling out. Only a small patch of grass across the street was victimized, sizzling slightly in the darkness, while Shego found herself sinking to the curb just a minute later.

The man, who just a minute ago was ready to accost her, stood in the edge of the streetlight, looking down at where she sat, panting. He was an odd type, a voice that matched his body and face, with rounded features and a wide nose set over an even wider mouth, just starting to show the signs of repeated smiling. Now it was set into a thin purse. The most defining feature about him, more than the air of hostility he could give off, despite so obviously being a pacifist, was his eyes. They were thin and narrowed, dark brown orbs that reflected just a sliver of light from the pole above them, but that light seemed to reflect his entire soul.

"I'm Chris." He said after a moment of staring her down.

She had spent the last moment panting, much more subtle in the way she sized somebody up. Still, she held out a hand, and wasn't the least bit surprised when it was wrapped in a firm grip that was surprisingly soft. "Shego."

"So, Miss 'High and Mighty' got herself caught too, then?" He asked, dropping to the curb beside her. Shego was half sure that he was just trusting her this much because she looked like shit. Only half sure though. His eyes, when they halted their critical scrutiny of her, became wide and glittered under the light. Like a child, almost, and almost like a calculated look a spy like herself might put on.

"Yeah. Just my luck, too. Came to say I'm sorry, and she pulls this disappearing act."

"You're sorry, huh? And your wife? Don't suppose you were the reason she was crying yesterday morning?" She heard the masked sound of a choker chain being wrapped around a knuckle.

"Yesterday?" Shego shook her head. "No, for this morning."

They sat like that for several more minutes, Shego tiredly slumped against the sidewalk, spent, even for the little exertion. Chris was scowling at the darkness, only to occasionally sniff and wipe his nose from the cold. She couldn't quite pin exactly why he was there, but she could bet it was because she was his best hope to find his sister.

Shego was the first to break the silence. "Now, how do I find that no good wife of mine?"

"Hmm… I guess we'll just have to call up Wade and see."

"The nerd?" He nodded in response. "Great…"

The worried look Wade had on when he had answered told her all she really needed to know, almost letting her hang up before a lengthy conversation, but the boy hacker proved surprisingly helpful. He'd never even questioned why it was that Shego was looking for Kim, or questioned anything, really.

It was odd, and she knew from his 'chapped lips' and nervous eyes that he was hiding something from her. What that was, was another matter completely.

"Here's what I've got on her so far. I can plot where the plane was heading, PacTac, but I can't find anything on her after that." Wade said, uploading the data to Chris' mobile. He'd only been able to track Kim so far, and they could only suspect that Monique was with her. There were no channels open in Global Justice, no way to get a bead on her, from what Wade had mentioned. That, and Kim's fancy phone had taken a quick jump off a plane halfway in the wilderness.

The situation had a few too many variables for Shego, and she intended to take her time deciding, leaning back against the sidewalk to stare up into the light. The communicator had jumped, there was the possibility that Kim and Monique were with it, stranded somewhere. But that wouldn't add up, not to her, though Chris seemed intent on following the lead through.

"C'mon, girl, or I'll leave without 'chu." He grumbled in the background, already up on his feet and pacing.

"No. We're heading to Pacific," She declined.

"But what if they're out there?" Chris snapped.

Shego shook her head, raising the phone again. "If they were, we'd be talking to her on this thing right now." Her attention switched. "Nerdlinger, book us a flight to Pacific City. While you're at it, get me everything you can on the Global Justice office there."

"Global Justice?" Wade's eyebrows furrowed, obviously not liking the idea. Despite his reluctance, he complied. Shego tried to jot down a mental note to beat the reason why out of him later, but exhaustion was screwing with her short term memory.

"You in?" She asked Chris as she hung up the phone, letting Wade work his magic.

"You really think you can find them?" He looked her down again. It definitely was a hidden intelligence, hiding behind the exuberant personality that took up the spotlight in his eyes. She knew it all too well, recognized it every time she looked into her wife's eyes.

"I'm not sure if I can, or what'll happen when I do. But, I think… I think I need to."

He regarded the contemplation on her face, regarded the words she said. He had heard the story already, despite playing dumb. He'd been 'around' when Kim had told the story of how a drunken tryst had led to her being married. The two seemed to have more issues to work through than any normal couple, but when someone's tired enough to drift to sleep, sitting up, with their eyes open, there were certain limits to the lies they could put out in their posture.

There were limits to how much she cared for Kim that he couldn't tell, but he could tell the truth of her words, and could only nod silently at them. A few moments later, giving him the time to properly compose himself as he always did, Wade called back, startling Shego awake.

"Ho-yah, time to get to work!" He shouted, drawing a quick glare from Shego and the occasional bark from a neighboring dog. "What's he got for us? Super-sonic jet? Military spy-plane?"

It turned out to be tickets to Middleton International. Half an hour later, Shego sat in the window seat, Chris twitching impatiently at her side. There was a nice view of Middleton passing beneath them, but the villainess reached up and pulled the blinds closed, before wrapping herself in a blanket and settling back.

"How can you sleep at a time like this?" Her annoying faux-sidekick asked, before noting that she was both wrapped under a blanket, and still wearing the same ratty clothes she'd had on before, including a absolutely filthy, now that he had a clear look at it, leather jacket. "Ain't 'chu gonna' get hot?"

Shego pursed her lips and shot him a nasty glare. "I'm sleepy, doy, and my body will cool off when I'm asleep." She muttered grumpily. "You're new to this, kid, but there's nothing you can do when you're miles in the air and all the arrangements are made. Now sit back, and go to sleep."

She made herself sound as groused and nonchalant as she could, but knew for a fact that she wasn't going to sleep as easy as she should have. Kim as missing, one of her best friends too, most likely to be used as a hostage, and there wasn't a single reason Shego could think of for this to be happening. Well, a single reason that didn't involve a drunken Canadian wedding.

_She's gone, it's all my fault, and I still can't apologize for sleeping around. Or at least make her see that I didn't do anything wrong… Damn woman is so much more trouble than she's worth._

Shego settled her face against the plane's wall, one eye dimly aware that she could see out into the deep, dark sky. Maybe it wasn't so true. Sure, she was trouble incarnate, Shego had always known that, but maybe, if this went well, maybe she was just worth it.


	14. Pacific City

**A/N:** Edit 11-14-11. Not really sure what to think of this entire arch anymore. The villains here are a mismatch of characters from various movies. The big GJ cop is Bambino from the old spaghetti-western Trinity movies. The blue-eyed man is Carter from Payback, a late nineties Mel Gibson movie. You might notice a couple just moved from South Park around too. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

Kim Possible swallowed, hard. A lump had gotten stuck in her throat, the embodiment of her worry and fear. It grew and grew, swelled and swelled, until it sank into the pit of her chest, constricting her lungs almost painfully.

It was entirely unlike watching a bad soap opera or cheesy super villain, getting kidnapped this time. There was nothing to lean her stern sense of justice on, no diabolic evil or shining rays of good. Just a man sitting before her in a plush blue chair. She couldn't even feel hate or anger at this man.

His lackey duo had lead her up to his office when the sun was dipping low on the horizon. She had no idea how long she'd been out, but knew from the pleasant grogginess that she'd slept well during the car ride. She also knew from the fractured dreams she'd kept being pulled out of, that the car ride had turned into a plane ride halfway through, loading the old Crown Vic into the back of a military transport.

She was just too exhausted to get up, too exhausted and numb to really open her eyes until she was stumbling before the man in the plush blue chair. It hurt her heart to face him, because she knew, deep within her spiritual center, that both men behind her had their guns out and leveled on her.

Yet he was facing away, cooing into the handset at his ear and making baby noises at his child on the other end of the line. Eventually his playful baby conversation ebbed into a quiet talk with his wife, before he finally got to work.

The man was practically beaming with pride as he turned towards Kim. He would have still been beaming even if he knew that she was just humoring him, well aware and capable of handling the two behind her with ease.

"Family business," He explained. _It's dark out. I wonder if anyone is out looking for me… Probably not, huh?_

"So, Kim Possible… Sorry for making you wait," Without an introduction, he keyed a quick command into the pad built into his desk, letting the blinds slide closed behind him. A screen drifted down from the roof behind him, but her gaze was locked on his face. There was no determination, no will to fight, in her gaze, but there wasn't any in his either.

This was business, for both involved. It just made her so sick that she knew this man was going to make a grave mistake holding her at gunpoint, and she couldn't at all call him evil, not for his slicked salt-and-pepper hair, or the cool blue gaze he held her with.

No, he wasn't evil, he was the epitome of humanity. His smile even reminded her of the kindly Mister Stoppable, who's smile was wide, assuming, and true. It made her sick, but she held herself back from dropping the three, just to hear him out.

"Let's get down to business," He started, depressing another button on his keyboard. Kim looked up in shock as the screen switched effortlessly to an image of Monique, sitting in a monolithic interrogation room.

"Where is it?"

* * *

**The Next Morning…**

"They're in there, right?" Chris asked, making a vague wave at the building down the street from them. It was massive, nearly fifty stories tall, but hardly managed to shoot above the rest of the buildings around them. That might have not been too impressive, but the city they were in right now was just a suburb of Pacific City itself.

The island that held the tower, distinct for the two large gargoyles positioned on either side of the entrance at the top, was small compared to the other three boroughs of Pacific. This one lay at the center of a large lake, with the main city off to the east, bordering, oddly enough, the Atlantic. Further inland to the west were the other two suburbs of the city, one more with a massive downtown of skyscrapers that could be seen over the hills that surrounded Chris and Shego, if they could see through buildings, and one that was mostly all over-developed sprawl.

Shego didn't much care for Pacific. The city was a white steed in the image of government power and progress, all state of the art businesses, easy living, and crime-free streets on the outside, but she'd worked enough with the city leaders here to know that the pretty picture they painted was skin deep. She didn't even find it farfetched that Global Justice's flag-building sat just down the street from a Senor Senior-owned restaurant, and just across the street from the reigning seat of power for the Pacific City mafia.

"So? We gonna go get 'em out or what?" Chris continued when Shego didn't respond. She was resting against the wheel of their 'borrowed' car, green eyes clouded over in thought as they scanned the tall buildings around them.

Global Justice, mafia across the street, absolutely nothing to raise any suspicions on the outside. Definitely fishy. "No, we're not," She said, flipping out Chris' phone again. A half-second later, Wade's voice answered in a quick greeting. "Got anything, Nerdlinger?"

"Unfortunately not," He replied. Her constant quips and insults did little to phase him, and she knew he was hiding something because of it. It didn't make sense to hold his tongue that much. "Global Justice H-Q is one thing, but that building is completely closed-circuited. They aren't even on the official power-grid, it looks like their only outside power comes from the alley."

Shego nodded. "Looks like they want to make this fun for us," She drawled sarcastically.

"If that's what you call fun… Well, there is one thing, but I figure you probably know it already…"

"What?" She raised an eyebrow.

"It looks like they're trying to find you. Alerts are going up all over the city, in Middleton and Go too. And, Shego?" The way his voice twisted in pity told her far more than she wanted to know. "They've impounded your plane, and ransacked your apartment in Go. And, your butler…"

"Faakkk," Shego groaned when he let the sentence hang, hitting her head against the top of the steering wheel while Wade signed off.

"It personal enough for us to crack some skulls yet?" Chris growled, nearly jabbing her in the side until she shot him a nasty look. He annoyed her far more than she should have let him, and it was getting harder and harder to just blame that on being grumpy.

"Look, it's bad enough that I work for Drakken." She growled. "He can order me to do stupid things like that, but I'm not going to let you keep telling me to do the same things."

"Well I'm sorry if my sister and her best friend are important enough," Chris retorted mockingly. His voice rose little by little, filling the tiny car more than their egos, even. "Don't you even care-?"

Her hand flicked out, faster than his eyes could even follow. One second she was resting against the wheel, the next she had him by the throat, one hand glowing a faint green that reflected in his eyes as they widened in fear.

"Finish that sentence, I dare you." Whatever it was that he said, it had definitely struck a nerve.

Truthfully, Shego didn't even know why that resonated so much for her. She'd been musing on just how much she really did care for her wife for days now, how much that redhead was worth to her. She still didn't have an answer, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let some punk badmouth her on the limits of her feelings for Kim. She eventually eased up after several seconds of tense silence, in which Chris proved smart enough to keep his mouth shut, before finally releasing his neck and letting him slip back against the seat.

He seemed more surprised that she had the strength to lift him off the cushion than that she would snap at him for something like that. She turned away, feeling almost regretful for her brief burst of anger.

Shego's eyes, refusing to stay on any object in the suddenly-stuffy car, drifted across the street. It was steep and hilly, but cars were still parked on the edge of it, and people still traversed up or down on their way towards the bus stops or home. Few were dressed casually, with most wearing some different color of the same type of business suit. They looked like herds of faceless drones to her, but after watching them for a moment, her eyes sparked with a sudden idea.

She flipped out Chris' phone once more, calling for the helpful hacker himself. "Wade?"

"What's up?" He responded through the ear-piece, not surprising her when he answered without her dialing.

"Are there any other companies in the G-J building?"

"None that aren't on their payroll," Wade answered without a pause.

She nodded, flipped the phone closed, and started up the car, sliding it out of the parking space. Chris was still silent from the passenger seat, but his gaze followed her curiously.

* * *

**Later…**

Stan was a working man, never one to consider himself especially smart. He'd moved with his boyfriend to Pacific and found a job not long after, a job pushing mail carts and answering phones for some start-up justice company that he heard had just been granted special international powers.

He could easily say, "I open the mail of diplomats," only because he wasn't graced with a higher education, and thus a higher security ranking. He didn't know anything that went on above the twenty-seventh floor, but he was fine with that. It paid the bills, and when the sun started going down, he could always leave and forget work for another night.

That was his plan when he clocked out for the night, nodding his goodbye to the security guards after being wanded on his way out. He practically skipped down the stairs in front of the skyscraper, eager to get home and spend the rest of the night in with his boyfriend. Not so eager for another hour-long commute, but it was a small price to pay.

That eagerness still took his mind off other things, daydreams clouding his vision so he didn't notice the car following him for several minutes, or the duo get out and start tracking him on foot. He only noticed the two when he looked back and noticed a man, half a block away, suddenly look away.

Stan frowned and turned back to his path. The bus would be here soon, and if he didn't hurry he would have to walk all the way to the next stop. It wasn't exactly a bad day for a walk, but having grown up in a rural little town, he could still hardly stand the smell of toxic fumes and oil.

A noise startled him from behind and he threw a cautious look over his shoulder. The man he'd seen behind, he could size him up as a tall, well-built African American, was arguing with a lady he must have pushed into a homeless vendor. Nothing exactly out of the ordinary there, though the lady looked a bit ratty to him. The man seemed to be wearing a business suit several sizes too large, some sort of business-casual for the modern generation, he figured humorously.

A hundred different little encounters happened every day on the same stretch of street, but Stan ignored them all the same. None of them had ever progressed into anything, not in the middle of downtown, and Pacific was far too large a city to ever see another pedestrian again.

That was what he figured, until he noticed the two climb into the bus behind him. They got in together, the last on the bus, but instantly the woman turned on him.

"Back off. You ride, fine, but you do it away from me, capiche?" She practically shouted, shoving the man away from her.

"We going to have a problem back there?" The bus driver asked from up front, eyes flicking to the mirror to scan through the passenger.

"No. No problem," She insisted, before turning away just to catch Stan staring at her from down the isle. It wasn't really his fault though, she just had the oddest color of skin. Kind of a milky green, with sparkling green eyes. Kind of like that dangerous villain that kept popping up on the news.

"Hey, buddy," She said, smiling down at Stan. He had no clue when she'd gotten so close, but she was close enough for him to smell the stink of wet leather from her coat and grime from a city life. "You like my makeup? I don't got any on me, but I can order you some. Going price is forty, but for you, I'd do thirty-five."

"No, thank you." Stan declined, inching away. If he was any other man, her cocky drawl might have been appealing. He could easily see that she was attractive, and probably could have been drooling with a single flick of her gloved hands.

"Twenty-five?" He shook his head, immune to her saleswoman's charm. "Twenty?" He shook his head again. "How about some rings for the missus then? Fine lad like you's gotta have someone waiting for him."

Stan glanced up only briefly to look at her wares, a broken collection of golden and silver rings and necklaces. For lack of paying attention, he didn't even notice that they were suspiciously like those from the vendor just up the street from work.

She finally gave up as the bus pulled out, eventually inching away from him, to hawk her products around him. Stan couldn't tell whether to pity her or not when she received a similar response around the bus. He didn't pay it any more attention though. More out of instinct than sleepiness, as soon as the bus had started Stan curled up over his work bag and fell asleep.

* * *

**Later…**

Chris had gotten off side-by-side with their charge, instantly starting off the opposite direction. The guy they were following was a bit out of it, by the looks of things, walking slowly and tiredly, but never stopping, even when he wasn't paying attention. It was like a zombie on a little train track.

He turned as soon as he figured the guy was out of easy sight range, watching him disappear around a corner and keep walking on. The bus beside Chris hissed and rose, almost ready to leave, until Shego squeezed out of the doors.

"Which way?" She snapped, still slightly pissed at him for earlier. He found it easier now to hold his tongue, pointing down the way Stan had walked off with an over-sized hand.

Chris still wasn't sure what to think of Shego. They weren't friendly, just partners towards mutual goals, but he had to admit that she did live up to her reputation. Blending into a crowd when you're the most famous green villain in the world was undoubtedly harder than she made it look, but she'd even managed to cover up for Chris' earlier slipup with no trouble.

"Come on," She said, motioning with her head before starting off after their target. He couldn't help but notice how unkempt her hair was getting, seeing as how he'd never seen her outside of videos and pictures and it was always polished to a glossy sheen.

The villainess was obviously willing to drag herself through these trials to get to her heroine. That was probably what influenced his decisions the most. "A'ight, I'm coming."

Ten minutes and several winding turns later, in which Shego still managed to keep her cool and Chris stumbled around like a bumbling fool, Stan finally jogged up the stairs to a modest looking duplex. Shego noted two bikes out front on his side of the building.

"Well, we followed him home," Chris mumbled behind her. Her face split into an angry scowl when she noticed how close he was standing. "Now what? Do we mug him and take his clothes?"

"No, we walk up and ask for his help," She said with a surprisingly serious tone.

He was just starting to get used to her sarcasm when she started across the street, not looking the least bit stealthy or conspicuous. Instead she walked across the yard and headed up the stairs with a deliberate calm. When he found himself lagging behind, Chris jogged, catching up to her before she could knock on the door.

When he caught her outside the door she had turned back to watch him. He found a previously-manicured eyebrow arched at him, she was looking at him as if trying to judge what was going on in his head at the moment. But what was really supposed to go on in his head? They'd just tailed some random stranger across the city, and were now poised to knock on his door and just ask for help? Maybe that, by itself, wasn't so strange. But she was the world's most wanted woman.

"Just stay behind me, and don't do anything," She warned before knocking.

It took half a minute, but the door swung open. It wasn't their man who answered though, but a shorter, ginger-haired one.

"Yeah?" The new guy asked as the door clicked, the telltale sound of a chain-lock hitting its maximum length.

Chris wasn't sure what to expect, whether Shego was going to suddenly pull the goods she'd filched out and start hawking them, or just ask to go inside and explain their cause. He sure wasn't expecting it when one of Shego's hands flicked out, cutting the chain lock in half, and the other flew in a short jab, breaking the boy's nose in a quick strike.


	15. Pacific Planning

**A/N:** Edit 11-15-11. Derp. Decent changes to the tone of the first half. While this is Stan and Kyle, we're talking about, even they need a bit of emotion attributed to heavy situations like this. I also wanted to give more insight into the character of Shego as I portray her, someone who's been on the job long enough that she can calculate most situations. Shego has always been the powerful, intelligent, woman-who-can-take-over-the-world type of person, she just hasn't wanted to. In this instance, I've tacked that up to not having any real want to win all those times, she's been planning for her own losses. **~VLU**

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

* * *

The 'battle', if it could be called that, lasted just a few seconds. The second man, they later found out his name was Kyle, fell back at the punch, flailing wildly until he flipped over a couch behind him. Stan, their target from earlier, was just off to the side in the kitchen. He didn't know what to do, finally opting to fumble to pull his cell out of his pockets.

It fizzled and snapped seconds after when a small spark of plasma jumped out of Shego's fingers and struck it. Kyle had gotten up by then, flying into a rage and jumping at Shego. She hardly even blinked as she deflected his hands away from her. A quick double-palm-strike later, Kyle's arm made a sickening _pop_ as it raised, his nose released a new fountain of blood, and he fell back. All through this, Chris couldn't even get his wits about him, not until later when he was helping the unconscious ginger into an empty chair.

Stan was forced into the living room alongside the two other men seconds later, protesting verbally, but not daring to stand up to the woman. His phone was a fried mess on the floor, a testament to her power that held him frozen in fear. The sense of time that came with that fear was unique and tangible to the two men who were currently awake. It was something everyone saw on television, robberies, muggings, hostage situations, but nothing that ever happened to them.

Now they were there and for all their limitless intelligence, they were stuck in the present, the adrenaline flowing, the pumping of hearts, gasping of lungs, throbbing of every bit of silence that followed every action. They couldn't think, they couldn't plan. "Dude, look. I don't know who you are, but-"

"Shut up," Shego barked, cutting Stan off mid-sentence. She was calm, she was in control. She was rifling through his mail, leaving Chris to watch over the two hostages. Well, one and a half until Kyle woke up. His awake charge was on his knees at the chair's side, fear and denial present in his face, absent of thoughts of saving himself or his boyfriend that would only show themselves later, in hindsight.

It was, perhaps, because he was in that moment that Chris could read him so well, despite being anxious himself. Stan was definitely not composed. There was a certain worry in Stan's eyes that Chris could see, focused on the unconscious man lying in the chair. That worry was what Chris had seen in Shego's eyes earlier in the day, when she'd snapped at him for a sarcastic comment. His eyes held the same hidden fear, as if trying to keep the attention off it. He didn't succeed, but Shego looked to be in her zone.

"Stan?" Shego asked, looking at the names on the bills. The young hostage, a man with fit, if average, features, who looked to be between boyhood and adulthood, swallowed and nodded. "And that would be Kyle?" He nodded again.

She stalked away, taking a slow look around the duplex. It was a nice enough place, just a little two-bedroom over a single garage. No other surprises seemed to be lurking around any of the corners for her, but that wasn't really the reason she was checking out the place, and even Chris seemed to pick up on that.

The more she walked, the more Chris seemed to compose his wits about him. His first impression of Shego had been rather normal, a cynical, laid-back hench-woman who knew her stuff. His second impression, starting as soon as Shego's hand had landed in Kyle's face, was that she was a psychopath. It was just now that he was starting to realize most of what she did was either fueled by emotions or highly calculated, and even then, her emotional outbursts tended to be calculated more often than not.

She must have calculated this environment too. While Chris settled down, Stan seemed to stew in an air of fear, an air that grew to be more and more oppressive and awkward with every second. By the time she'd returned, he was fidgeting openly, shaking in his slacks, his rattie old hat with sweat. No longer was his fear hidden, it was pronounced, and she was in complete control. But Chris had known that since he'd boarded the plane with her.

"We're going to talk now, Stan," She explained slowly, like talking to a child about the rules of a game, "If you don't want to talk, Kyle will get hurt. If you lie to me, Kyle will get hurt. If I just want to be a bitch, Kyle will get hurt."

Stan nodded slowly, swallowing his fear and looking her straight in the eye for the first time. He hadn't even done that when she had approached him on the bus. "Don't hurt him, dude. I'll do whatever you want."

"Good boy," She replied appreciatively, patting his head. "I haven't hurt him too much yet, maybe wrenched his arm a little, but nothing that won't heal in a week. Let's try to keep it that way, okay?"

"Can't-" Stan fidgeted nervously once more, "Can't you just threaten me?"

_So, you two are lovers…_ Shego practically purred when she realized. That was probably why this was going so easy. "But, Stan," She cooed with mock sincerity, "You're much too important to me right now. Now, let's get started, and I'll try to keep this simple."

She frowned a moment later, forest-green lips pursing in thought. There was just one problem here; Stan was acting a bit too nervous. He seemed to get distracted every time he looked at the injured young man in the chair beside him, only paying her half of his attention. She found it so hard to interrogate someone when they couldn't keep their mind on the interrogation.

"You, take Kyle here into the bathroom and clean him up. Stan and I are going to talk."

Chris grumbled behind her. He'd kept quiet so far, which was a giant bonus to her, but she didn't know how much more of these interrogation techniques she could bust out before he snapped at her too. At least he wasn't a perfect saint like Kim was.

_She's going to kick my ass when she finds out what I've done here_, Shego groaned to herself.

A few minutes later Kyle and Chris were gone, leaving Shego and Stan alone in the living room. His focus was now entirely on her, no longer looking away, no longer showing the same signs of fear and weakness as he had earlier.

"Do you work for Global Justice?" Shego started.

He nodded. "I'm a mail clerk. All I do is push papers all day, I swear." Stan added, nervously removing his beanie hat to scratch at his scraggily black hair. A nervous tick, Shego noted, but not specifically a tell for bluffing.

"So you don't have any security access?" He shook his head. "Do you know where they keep prisoners, inside?"

That threw Stan through a bit of a loop. "Dude, we're just an office building…"

**A Short Interrogation Later**

Through nearly an hour of questions, Shego had gotten all the information she needed, and Stan had learned a little himself. He'd only denied her once, and that was when she requested something more than just questions and answers.

At the peak of the questioning, she'd ended up holding one of the newly-awakened Kyle's arms, one hand glowing just above it. "Do you think I wouldn't kill for her?" She'd growled with a feral gleam to her eyes.

Stan looked her in the eyes long and hard before he answered. "No, I don't think you would. But I'll help you anyway, just don't hurt him."

While no one could condone her methods, each one of them inside that room had figured, even if they wouldn't admit it, that they'd do the exact same thing if faced with the same challenge and given the chance. Stan was holding out for his boyfriend, Chris, for his sister, Shego, for her wife, and Kyle, for Stan again, speaking only occasionally to try to convince her to let the beleaguered youth go.

It didn't seem at all odd to Shego when they bunked down in the living room with their hostages and Stan and Kyle seemed closer than she figured they'd ever been. The two whispered sweet and fearful nothings into each others ears until they fell asleep, and only after they had fallen asleep did Chris finally come back inside. It seemed more odd to her that Chris was homophobic.

"You really think this'll work?" He asked, staring up at the ceiling, while Shego attempted to sleep on the couch opposite him.

She looked down at Stan, and then to Kyle, wrapped protectively in his arms. "Yeah, I think it will." She whispered silently, before finally letting herself rest.

**The Next Morning…**

Stan bid his odd hostage-family goodbye the following morning, once more dressed business-casual and ready for work. The request Shego had originally given him, to find her wife or her wife's friend and relay a message to her, had been opted out for just finding where the hell she might be. Much planning seemed to be going on back in his quiet little duplex, some that went straight over his head.

But that, as Shego had been quick to remind him, wasn't his problem. His problem was just to get in, find the girls, and get out before Shego decided to give Kyle a Indian-burn that was only a minor percent Indian and a major percent burn.

"What have I gotten myself into?" He muttered hopelessly as he boarded the bus for his morning commute. He thought he'd gotten rid of all his troubles when he moved to the big town. There was no one here who knew him, no one needed to know about his relationships, or his family or past. Pacific was a big place too, and the little suburb of Olive was a peaceful place mostly free of crime.

Yet he'd still managed to get taken hostage, and now asked to spy on a company he really knew nothing about. "I'm just cursed…"

The scenery passed in a mix of gray buildings and a deep gray fog, an ugly, soupy color that blocked out any signs of wilderness outside the cities. Mornings were always dreary here, and the scenery melded so well he may as well have just been looking at a gray wall.

With that in mind, he drifted off to sleep, putting thoughts of hostages and spies out of his mind for a completely normal workday. At least, he hoped.

**Meanwhile…**

"How much do you care for her?" Chris asked, suddenly breaking the somewhat tense silence of the duplex. Shego grumbled under her breath. For the entire morning, he'd been playing with a complex array of products and toys he'd gotten while avoiding the live-in couple last night, while she had been following up as many leads as she could on his cell and Kyle's laptop.

All she managed to find out was that even Betty was worried about the girl, and that did not bode well. "Look, it's not my fault, alright?" She snapped at him. "She's the one who told me to get lost. What was I supposed to do, sit around and wait for her for the rest of my life?"

Chris leaned back against the couch, letting his head loll to the side so he could watch the woman work. He couldn't help but wonder if she was ever happy, or if she spent her entire life the way he'd seen her so far; grumpy, snippy, and with a bad case of "the hell should I care?"s. Kim, who'd been like a sister to him and couldn't help but brag about her exploits, had mentioned her being something like this before. It just seemed different.

"Heh… She's got you tied around her little finger, don't she?" Chris quipped after a moment.

Shego shot him a look over the laptop, a sharp scowl that warned of imminent danger. "We no insult-ee the woman who can boil skin, _comprende_?" She warned.

"And we no burn the man who's going to help you get into a highly dangerous government facility." He returned coolly. Shego hadn't noticed it before, but it seemed a lot like Chris was more stupid than he let on. Either that, or much more brave. So far she had yet to see him really fear anything.

"And just how're you going to do that?" She called skeptically over his shoulder while he returned to work.

A moment later he produced a simple enough device, tossing it lazily in her direction. It looked like a pulley a clothesline would hang from, only cut in half an jerry-rigged to attach to the opposite side, inverted. It also had what appeared to be bike handles machined in, and a bicycle's break stuck in the middle to a simple-enough lever. She looked it over curiously, unsure quite what to make of it, or the clasp it had to attach to a belt loop.

She shook her head and returned to work when he offered no explanation, letting the hours tick by painfully slow. By the time afternoon had settled in, Shego had planned entrances and exits for their target building for nearly every floor, using the blueprints Wade had sent them earlier. And Chris… As much as Shego hated to admit it, Chris had probably doubled her chances of succeeding.

In the morning alone he'd walked her through using his homemade smoke bombs, gas pellets, tranquilizer darts, the pulley he'd rigged for climbing ropes, and more gadgets. He laced household chemicals together, disassembled and reassembled common machines, and built toys that Shego actually had to admit she was thankful to have. A bit worried, but still thankful.

He was a genius with little facts that Shego had never thought much of; electronics, chemicals, mechanics, things that put him nearly on the level of Wade or Drakken. Though, with the materials he had used, it was more like some sort of back-alley Wade or Drakken, the kind you meet in a dark place with a wad of bills in your hand.

Kyle had spent the morning grumbling under his breath at her, never out of Shego's eyesight for long. It took the entire morning for him to forgive her for the broken nose and wrenched arm, and even then she didn't know why. She didn't really pay attention to him staring at her, marking it off as his hatred for what she was doing. The look of contemplation he had was lost on her.

Eventually, he judged her worry and her feelings to be true, and even he helped her get ready, ripping and sewing her clothes to move lighter and quieter. She stood before the mirror shortly after, looking at her reflection. She could also admit that the patches in her leather jacket's elbows and shoulders actually looked pretty badass. "You know, I'm not sure if I should be surprised a flaming young man like yourself knows how to sew."

He scowled at her as she ruffled his fiery orange hair. "The sooner you get out of here, dude, the better."

"Alright," She relented with a half-smile. "And this has nothing to do with what you'd do in my situation?"

"Your situation?"

"Yep." Shego shifted, mock-posing in front of the mirror. She should have been eager to get back into her catsuit, the one designed specifically to keep her cool, comfortable, and smelling like lilacs twenty-four seven. But this jacket, a spur of the moment decision from back when she was under the attitudinator's spell, was growing on her more and more. It didn't hurt that Kim had smiled when she picked it out for Shego. _"It's totally you,"_ She'd said, _"You'll look hot in it, trust me."_

Her lips pursed as the memories drifted around her. Memories of a time when she and Kim had hung out openly, smiling, laughing, and just enjoying the time they spent together. Even back then, her crush on the sweet redhead was nothing new, it had just become so much more real, more pronounced.

"What would you do if Stan was kidnapped?"

"He's been kidnapped before, dude, I wouldn't think much of it." Kyle replied without thinking.

Stan walked in the door in his tired, mindless stupor, glancing only briefly at Chris, who had a gasmask on and a array of toxic chemicals strewn across his coffee table. Instead, his attention was drawn to hallway, where Shego was practically laughing her ass off, hanging off his bewildered boyfriend and clutching her ribs.

He turned back to Chris, who only shrugged while he filled a hollowed egg with a mix of chemicals and duct tape.

**Shortly After…**

Shego stood at the head of the coffee table, temporarily cleared of Macgyver'ed gadgets so a cheaply printed blueprint could be placed over it. Her earlier mirth was no longer present, replaced with a stern gaze that shifted to Stan, standing somewhat shyly across from her.

"You're sure? Thirty-fifth floor?" She asked, hands tracing the blueprints to the floor. Everything above the twenty-seventh was grayed off; no floor plans, no information beyond that it existed.

"Dude, I don't know. I just asked Tom in the mail-room if he'd heard about some girls being brought in. He said thirty-fifth floor."

Shego pursed her lips, nodding silently. She had a plan for there, but it basically just consisted of entering the building and scaling the elevator shaft.

"You think it's a trap?" Chris asked, even his own stupidly happy attitude temporarily sated for now.

"Yeah. It's a trap."

"You still going in?"

Shego gave him a reassuringly cocky smile. "Of course." She turned her attention to her hostages, smiling warmly over them. "Gentleman, it's been a pleasure, but this seems to be where we get off."


	16. Pacific Breakin

**A/N:** Edit 11-19-11. A few slight edits. A few added sentences. That is all. **~VLU**

* * *

"Damn, it's cold!" Chris hissed through his teeth. Shego stopped him as they turned the corner, pressing her palm to his chest and silently inching him backwards.

She hadn't expected guards, not this quickly, but there they were. Two men stood in front of the parking garage that twisted around beneath the building, their heads well below ground level. Above them and around the corner towards the street was a simple enough guard station where a woman sat, chomping down on a bag of chips with a television blaring noisily above her. With any luck, they could avoid her completely, but the two down there had to be dealt with.

It was time to take stock of her surroundings and formulate a plan. Having just arrived in another 'borrowed' car, there was still plenty of time to do things quietly and without any suspicion. That also meant if she screwed up bad enough, things would get much, much more difficult by the time she neared the top of the tower.

It could have been worse though. Pacific was the type of city that never slept. Beneath the cold steel of skyscrapers and mechanical sheen of glass, the streets were alight in vibrant colors by the time the sun went down. On their way here they'd passed any number of bright red and purple signs, buildings, and even streets.

But here, so close to city hall, the Global Justice building, the 'paper' building across the street, and any number of other shady business fronts… Here the pulse and flow of city life didn't dare enter but for the occasional thru traffic.

At this time of night, they were the only two out on the sidewalk. The building just next to the G-J tower had plenty of niches, and they'd chosen the one closest to the narrow service alley right on its side. It was filled with gunk; cigarettes, trash, beer bottles, condoms. She wouldn't be surprised if she found a cardboard hut or bum laying in the darkness.

That gave Shego a little idea, and she'd wasted too much time looking around to start on another one. She tapped Chris on the shoulder, motioning with two fingers.

_I'll take the one on the left, you take the one on the right._ Then, with all of her fingers before his face; _Five, four…_

Then she was gone, dark hair and dark clothes molding into the shadows. She could've easily been a foot away from him, there wasn't even the quiet whisper of fabric-on-fabric or limbs cutting through air.

_Three… Shit…_

Around the wall he waited behind were roughly two feet of sidewalk that cut between the two skyscrapers. A two-foot railing after that kept idle pedestrians from dropping down the six to fourteen feet that lead to the garage under the building. After that, the two guards waited in the corner, bundled for warmth and talking animatedly between themselves.

Chris noticed this all in hindsight. By the time he'd mentally counted down, he had rushed through most of the distance, overshooting his target by a good two feet.

In all his life, Chris had never once attacked someone. He had always been a star; tall since his youth, brilliant at sports, and athletically and academically gifted like none other in his class. He just had a little problem with being timid. But his position between athletics and intelligence had earned him the middle ground in many schoolyard brawls before. That was why he was so outspoken, a calculated defense that proved that a quick tongue was better at stopping fights than any fists were.

Now, in the dead of night and after five seconds of warning, he'd made the first strike. His feet had refused to stop in good time, shooting straight into the man he had targeted. Two feet later, his victim was putty between the considerable force of Chris' shoulder and the cement wall opposite him.

Shego, who was laying her own victim peacefully on the ground, leaned down to the one Chris had steamrolled. A quick once-over told her that most of the damage had been impacted by the folds of clothing, and only a few ribs had been broken. "Went a little overboard on him, didn't you?"

He suddenly hated her cool and sarcastic tone. "Where the hell were you?"

Shego pointed up with a gloved finger. There were no ledges above him, just cement for the first story. The building did close into a corner right above where the two had been standing, but how Shego could stick herself in a place like that without sliding was beyond him.

He looked down from the corner to see Shego rising from the two guards, her eyes trained on him. She was still calm and collected, calculating as much as Chris was, but where she did it on instinct, Chris calculated to stop himself from thinking that he'd just assaulted another man.

"You knew I don't fight," He hissed under his breath, approaching her until she was squeezed up against the corner of the cement, "And you could've taken them both down easy."

"Relax, Macgyver, and grab their wallets." She stepped past him as she ordered, already heading inside the parking garage.

"Who-? What?"

"I'm not sure what they'll think, but I'd guess they just got mugged." With a short laugh, she was gone, leaving him to clean up their mess. She was almost too much for him. Behind that sexy allure she achieved naturally and the grumpy wit she'd adopted was someone much smarter than him; always moving forward, but never giving ground or showing weakness.

"Damn woman," He muttered. He wouldn't be surprised if that prompt countdown she'd given him was the only way to get him to jump the guard.

Chris lifted as much as he could as quick as he could, taking everything on the two guards that looked valuable before catching up to Shego. She was standing in a corner, unscrewing the base of a security camera with a pocket knife. After a few moments the hinge dropped, no longer pointing across the near-empty underground lot, but now at the shadows directly below the device.

"There's the service entrance," She surmised, ducking low in the shadows for a moment.

"Doesn't it just go down under the building?" Shego nodded in response to his mumbled question. "You sure you can get in the elevator shaft by it?" She nodded again.

"Let's go," She called without warning, darting across the lot from car to car. They were all relatively fancy, if boring, choices. Besides the one bright red sports car in the corner opposite the two. "Still one more thing for you to do before you fetch the getaway car."

The duo paused only shortly when the elevator doors sprung open and a man walked out with a stack of papers under his arm. He was dressed for business, a hat on his head, long cotton coat over his shoulders, and wide-rimmed glasses over his eyes, Shego noticed, but he didn't stop to check his surroundings. As soon as he turned away, Shego shot out from cover once more, sliding to a stop at the old service entrance door.

Knowing how to pick a lock, and seeing a master like Shego in action were two completely different things. Chris hardly had the chance to see her slip out her tools before the two were already inside. She didn't seem the least bit worried about the man from earlier. His eyes, when she'd noticed them earlier, looked far too much like Stan's.

"If I got this right," She muttered to herself, deftly jumping down the set of stairs that presented themselves to her, "Boiler room should be just down there. Generator's to the left, mechanical supplies to the right. The drainage entrance should be right about…"

Chris opted to be the lookout while she checked her bearings, tensely glancing across the corridor. It was an old place, full of grimy stone and hissing pipes that looked much more fit to be in a low-budget slasher film than the middle of a high tech city. The lack of adequate lighting allayed much of his fears for being caught though.

"Found it," He heard Shego mutter behind him. Sometime or another, a shelf had been placed in front of the old door. Shego slid it to the side and squeezed in, followed by Chris, who nearly managed to knock over a paint-bucket filled with screws.

"With how fast we got in here, I'm surprised Kim ever catches you," He commented idly when they were inside, walking precariously close to her personal space. The drainage entrance was a tunnel, long and unlit, that was hardly two shoulder lengths across and just tall enough to make Chris duck through it. It was unnerving to Shego to be that enclosed on three sides, like her back was pressed up against a breathing wall.

"Yeah…" She mumbled back. "Funny, that."

"Wait a second," Shego could practically hear the glimmer in his eyes. "You let her catch you."

"I do not."

"You sabotage your own robberies!"

She shushed him before he got any louder. "I don't 'sabotage' my own robberies. I just give her the occasional hint."

"You really got a soft spot for her, don't'cha?" He joked, prodding her in the ribs with a finger.

Shego wheeled on him, hair flying in every direction with how fast she'd moved. "Don't you have something better to do right now?"

"Like musing on the fact that I'm walking through a coffin and can't see two inches beyond my face?"

Plasma, if it could be called that, spread from Shego's fingers, trailing up her hands in lazy green waves that lit up the slim on the walls like a mirror. It wasn't much, just enough to see Chris' face, and that was more than enough for her. The glimmer in his eyes wasn't quite as jovial as she'd first figured it to be, instead much more fearful. The same with his frightened smile.

_Claustrophobic…_ "Fine, muse away," She turned away, continuing on down the tiny, lightless hallway. "But I'll tell you the same thing I told her. It's no fun to be the best with no challenge left in the game."

Finally she stopped. They were halfway down the tunnel that seemed to run all the way under the building, halting occasionally for a grate or pipe sticking out of the wall, and only half-filled with the sound of running water from below. "As much as I value Kimmie's ability to hunt me down, that'd be kind of hard if she never got warned I was there in the first place- Stand back."

"So you let her catch you just to spend some time with her." Shego's reply was a grumble. She was turned towards the wall, approximately facing where they'd entered the parking lot, before two tunnels had taken them in a half-circle. A quick hiss and a pop later and she placed her fingertips against the wall, focusing harder and harder until they burned a much brighter blue-green.

"I don't let her catch me," She replied, under exertion, as she proceeded in welding a new door out of concrete. "I just let her find me."

"So you can spend more time with her."

Shego glanced at him with a nasty look bathed in the dim green light of her hands at work, once more reminded of the smile that hid his fear. "You know, kid, you should remember that look of yours. Bust that out one day, it'll be better than torture."

"Always thinking of a way to rip people off, huh?" He chuckled. It was more laughing at the fact that she was changing the subject than her own paranoid behavior.

"Yep. Now, push."

The newly-cut slab of concrete slid right out of its molten home. It seemed like the half-foot wall would topple for a few tense seconds, but between their considerable strength, they managed to push enough that Shego could jump through without scalding herself on the sides. All that without even making a clatter.

"Thank you very much," Shego even expressed gratitude sarcastically, calling back from the lighted side to Chris'. "Now, go find a getaway car and wait for me."

"You got it." Their parting was slow, almost awkward, at least to Chris. She was going to risk her life for his sister and best friend, and he had yet to even thank her for it all. Not to mention how hard it seemed for them to get along most the time. He doubted they even would if it hadn't been for this pushing them together. "Shego," He called as he turned, "Good luck."

"Hmm." Shego too turned, only half acknowledging him. "Chris," He paused again when she spoke, "We better not get pulled over after this cause you had to pick that fancy red sports car in the corner."

He laughed over his shoulder, and the two finally went their separate ways. Both had the uneasy feeling that this may have been the last time they would ever see each other.

**Shortly After…**

It was an interesting way to climb a rope, much less a thick steel cable like the ones in the elevator shaft. She could hear the whir of machinery around her, pulleys and cables still spinning in the half-lighted pit. That was where her good luck extended, since she could easily point out the deactivated laser-grid built into the walls. Must have turned it off when the elevators were running.

Her good luck did not extend to a comfortable way of climbing cables though. The device Chris had rigged together worked by clamping the breaks inwards when the break pedals were pulled down. That might have been good for sliding down the length of an elevator shaft, but to climb up a foot took a pull-up and the leg strength of a pole-dancer.

_Gonna be sore tomorrow,_ She chided herself.

At the tenth floor her arms were burning, but she'd finally found a little relief. This was where the elevator had parked, she'd seen it lower itself here from the bottom, and it had just the right handholds for her to grab onto the bottom and climb around it. Now she just had to hope it went the right way, or her arms would likely fall off before she even saved her wife.

She pulled herself up the car, pausing only occasionally to wipe grease and gunk from her gloves, before finally rolling to the safety of the roof. Another twenty floors of that might've pulled something, even for someone with her substantial strength.

Shego's panting caught in her throat with the elevator dinged and the _woosh_ of doors sliding open reached her ears. Two men entered, she could tell by the volume of their voices. One was light on his feet, only his voice giving away his position. He sounded seriously drunk, like every word was slow and slurry.

The other was quite a bit more dangerous, in Shego's book. She couldn't hear him walk, but could hear his voice, gruff and sharp against her ears. She could also tell the inch, almost, that the elevator sunk when he got in it. To make an elevator sink… The man must have been a giant.

Shego pressed her head flat against roof, slowing her breathing to distinguish the sounds on the other side, even as the car whirred and started. Thankfully, it was heading up, but it also made it hard to eavesdrop.

"Why can't you piss up there, huh?" The big one was saying to the lighter one.

"Hey, 'dey gots cameras, in 'de stalls," It was like a young, Italian Bill Cosby. A drunk, young, Italian Bill Cosby.

"One of these days, you'll have to piss in a room with someone else." The other one reminded her of an irate spaghetti western voice actor.

"We'a see."

"I swear, Frankie, I don't know what I'll ever do with you," The big one continued, sounding exasperated. The rest of the ride was done with idle small-talk, in which Shego learned that the big one was supposed to be laying off starchy foods, and Frankie was getting tired of those 'goons' down in the security wing making fun of his friend's weight. It seemed like a touchy subject, and Shego was growing suspicious that everyone she would meet in this city would turn out gay.

None of it really concerned her though, only serving to take her mind off the eventual confrontation of meeting Kim again. That, and take her mind off a boring twenty-five story elevator ride. She opened up a pouch of trail mix halfway through, and was nearly done with it when she counted floor thirty-five.

_This looks like my stop,_ she thought, only to pause when the elevator lifted out from under the big man's weight.

"Hold the door, I'll go get the girl," He told Frankie.

"Bring back so' coffee." She heard him mutter a affirmation over his shoulder as he left.

_God, I'm good,_ Shego exclaimed to herself. Her luck was looking better and better, and with any luck, he'd bring back both Kim and Monique, and she could just knock these loons out and slide down to the getaway car. _Here's to hoping._

Five minutes later, that was five minutes of Frankie singing horribly off-key and catchy pop tunes, his friend returned. She could hear them all settle back in the elevator, exchanging gifts, she guessed, but could only tell three of them.

"You want some?" The big man was offering something to their guest.

"No, thank you," Kim kindly declined. Shego's breath hitched slightly. It seemed like forever, even if it'd just been a day. She didn't sound any worse for wear, but Shego knew the sound of Kim when she was really alive, and this was not that.

"Jelly?" Frankie asked. He slurped loudly from what she guessed was a steaming cup of coffee, chewing on the donut between sips.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your names." _That's right, Kim, keep them distracted._

"Frankie," One said. "Well, 'dat is, Franklin, but you can cowl me Frankie." She assumed the silence afterward was him awkwardly trying to shake her hand while balancing a jelly donut and coffee.

"Name's Robert," The big one said when Frankie was done, "But they call me Bobbo."

"So, you two are… Partners?" Kim asked, somewhat awkwardly as well.

"Friends since first grade," Bobbo explained, "Not so much since he married my sister."

Frankie chuckled at that. "He jokes. We bot' loves her, only wants what's best, y'know." Kim let off a stray sound of confirmation. "Bobbo use 'da have 'dis problem wid' bullies, when we was kids, but I come in…"

Shego lay back, exactly over the spot she knew her wife was standing, and listened as a man explained in fractured English how he'd come to the rescue of a boy being picked on for his weight. Then how the two had stuck together through high school, college, and finally, finding a job. Bobbo had been hired first, for his considerable size to be used as a crime deterrent, and had gotten Frankie in with some brownie points from his manager.

Eventually she heard other names, like a boy named Charlie they'd met when in high school. "Cha'lie's a good kid, y'know, he's jus' a li'l confused." He was saying as they neared the top of the elevator shaft. "Like Ca'ta."

"You have to be tough to hold a job like that," Bobbo chimed in, "And if you aren't tough, it'll make you tough."

The elevator slid to a stop, just two floors from the top. "Come on, girl, let's get this over with so we can all go home."

"Yeah…" Kim answered, sounding distant as she followed the two. Distant was practically her middle name recently. A nagging part of her brain told her she should have escaped while she had the chance, busted out of the cell, saved her friend, and took down the evil organization before dinner time. But here she was, following two men who talked and chatted and joked animatedly between themselves, and she just felt so deflated.

She kind of thought about Ron, when looking at the two friends before her. But she also pictured Shego in place of one, and herself in place of the other, sharing quips over clothes shopping, or much more recently, ice cream and dinner.

It hurt her to think of that. Physically, like a pain in her chest.

So, Kim just kept quite as they entered through the wide double-doors, through the lobby, past the secretary's desk, and finally into the large and intricate office of the Global Justice Pacific Division's director.

"Mister Carter," She said, somewhat awkwardly, as she arrived. She couldn't help but think of what her captors had said and wondered if it was true. Maybe the job had perverted Carter's sense of justice. Maybe it'd twisted Betty's as well, and that was why she still remained in this position.

She tried to push the thoughts out of her head when Carter started talking. "Miss Possible-"

"Missus," She corrected without thinking.

"Okay, Missus Possible. We're all reasonable people here. I mean, we're reasonable, right, guys?" He motioned around the room, Bobbo and Frankie nodded and agreed hurriedly. The two guards she noted in the corner behind Carter didn't react.

"So, let's handle our problems like reasonable people. I know we got off on the wrong foot yesterday, but we can make that up today and be out of everyone's hair before dinner." Carter was smooth when he talked, a wide, perfect smile that showed openly under large dimples when he smiled. Sure, he was an odd, weathered man, but Kim couldn't find herself hating him, despite being kind-of-sort-of evil.

"And how do you suggest we do that?" She asked after a second.

"Well, you see, Franklin here misplaced a very valuable piece of paper when he was vacationing in Italy," His posture told her he was an experienced liar, "Now, I just want that paper, and that's it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kim groaned, exasperated.

"Franklin says he hid it in a sleeping bag. Now, he also says he saw your friend run off with that sleeping bag just a few moments later."

So that was where Shego had seen him before. She knew Frankie looked familiar, she just hadn't been able to place his face before. That was just because she'd only seen the back of it the last time they'd met.

"Blanket…" Kim murmured. Everyone seemed to perk up when she adopted something of a thinking pose. "I might know it. She said she helped me back in one, but I don't know where she put it. You'd have to ask-"

"Shego." Carter finished, sighing. "Yeah, I figured."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know where she is." She said this much more quietly, head downcast, face somber. "And I don't think she'd help me right now anyway."

"Missus Possible," The sudden smirk on Carter's face made her think of a father making up a mistake to his daughter with ice cream. Actually, that was just what it reminded her of, the day Kim's dad had forgot her Little League game. She had a bad feeling about this. "I'm normally a pretty good judge of a situation."

With a deliberate calm, he reached behind him, fumbling under a pile of papers on his desk. Eventually he pulled an object out from under a folder, a large, silver, definitely pistol-shaped object. It was a much larger gun than was needed to kill someone, and now he had it pointing directly at her from across the room, and from the way he held it, she didn't doubt his aim.

"And by that, I mean, you can come out now."

Kim blinked. A door to the side, most likely a conference room Kim had never paid attention to, opened. Out from it stepped the last person she expected to see here.

"Shego…" She gasped. It was her, holding a glowing fist up aimed at Carter's head. She looked like shit; disheveled hair, grease smeared to her face, her leather jacket had an odd faded-white tinge to it that she'd never noticed before. Even her t-shirt was ripped in a place. And that was not even mentioning the nasty scowl on her face. It was an oddly beautiful sight to Kim.

Shego's eyes temporarily fled from her target, glancing Kim over once to make sure she'd been taken care of. She noticed the redhead's gaze lingering on her sorry state and smirked. "Sorry, Princess, they were out of shining armors at the rental place."

"How touching," Carter quipped, "Put the- Um… Fist, down, and no one needs to get hurt."

"What are you doing here?" Kim asked over his question.

A flicker of emotion passed over Shego's face, hidden behind that cocky smirk of hers. Maybe fear? "Saving you. You didn't think I'd leave you hanging, did'ja?"

"Well… Yes… I mean, I'm sorry, Shego," The flicker of self-doubt crossed over her face, "I screwed up so much recently."

"Me too, Princess. I shouldn't have… But, I don't handle pressure and mistakes very well, I just don't." Her gaze had returned to her target, but her smile had lowered into something more genuine. It still wasn't smart to be looking her wife in the eye while talking though, not with four guns, Kim hadn't even noticed Frankie and Bobbo packing, all aimed at her.

"You always seem so collected though."

Shego let out a short laugh. "That's what you call my little blow-up at the airport? Or-" She cut herself off, frowning suddenly.

"Excuse me?" Carter called vainly in the silence that followed

Kim knew what was unsaid there, her memory still fresh with the girl she'd left at a county hospital in Go City. Some part of her wanted to reach out for Shego there, just because she was there and no one else was, and she so desperately needed someone, anyone, to keep her from going insane. Another part of her thought that it was wrong, and Shego had clearly gotten over her in the one night they had been apart then.

But she was here. That meant something, right?

"What was I supposed to think, Kim?" Her voice was serious when she spoke again. "You have your boyfriend, you don't need my drama, and… And if I can't have you, then I have to get over you before I sink any lower."

"Shego…" Kim found it startlingly heart-wrenching how Shego could say that through her teeth, as if forcing herself to believe it, while tears pricked the sides of her eyes enough for the redhead to see.

Carter groaned loudly. "Look, this is all very touching, but could we just keep movin-"

"_Carter?"_ Shego nearly jumped at the sudden voice, Kim did. It came from the desk and the telephone's loudspeaker that resided on it. The voice sounded old and worn from a lifetime of smoking and shouting. _"This is getting us no where. Deal with Possible and detain the other one, I'll be right over."_

"Shit…" Carter hissed under his breath. And, as if it explained everything, said, "My boss. Come along, Missus Possible, and remember, if you don't your friend might get hurt." As he said this, he inched away from Shego's glowing fist, closing the distance on the door with his gun still lowered at Kim.

"Come on, girl," Bobbo added with a near-undetectable grumble.

"Kim-" Shego growled.

The redhead shook her head, looking away sadly before she cut Shego off. "I'm sorry, I can't drag Monique into this."

Shego lighted her other hand, quickly spinning it behind her as her hostage walked out the doors, closing them behind her. Now it was aimed at one of the two against the windows, both with some odd model of machine pistol lowered at her.

It might have seemed odd to anyone else that they were both dressed in similar, rubbery jumpsuits, or that they both had the same guns, helmets, and body-builder muscles. To her, it was just another day on the job.


	17. Pacific Meetings

**A/N: **Edit 11-19-11. There were plenty of unsaid moments here that slightly eschewed what was happening. Some of them have been ironed out slightly. **~VLU**

* * *

"_Remember, we can't afford to kill both of them… Yet."_

There was a stand-off behind the massive windows of the fiftieth story, hidden behind the dark haze of city-life that glowed a collective orange that blotted out stars. Three people, two sides; One a career criminal fighting for her foil, her wife, the other two trained killers hiding behind government badges and the technology that had enhanced them.

Shego found it odd, when Carter had spirited Kim away and the lights had dimmed, how she could see herself reflected in their domed helmets. Rather than looking into the eyes of her enemy, she found herself staring down her own hands which were reflected as green flames, skewed by the perspective and shape of their mirrored faces. She briefly considered if the engineers who'd made the helmet had ever considered the possibility of them being used to perfect the aim of the weapons meant to do them in.

It wasn't just that, though. It was the perfection with how this was all set up. It was how the shadows were displayed large and menacing, lighted only by billboards beneath them and the hallway at her back. It was how the only visible features of the room that hadn't turned to emphasized shadows were herself, her enemies, and the table between them. Like in that moment, the only things that existed were two glowing balls of plasma and two sleek new guns.

When the twin guards shifted, ever so slightly, it was emphasized in a display of filtered light, shadow, and dramatic sense that rippled over every sinew of muscle that peeked out from their body-suits. With that alone, she was able to judge that their combat style had just changed significantly. No longer were they readying to kill her, they were letting the voice from the phone do all the talking now.

That voice was faintly familiar to her, but now it was telling them to take her in. Thus, it was in her way, and would be dealt with soon enough. She let the thoughts about him filter out of her mind, promising to remember who he was after these two were dealt with, and her wife was in her hands.

"No offense," She purred through the tense silence between the three and the desk, "But I've already chosen when and how I die. I can't afford to get caught up now."

It was her move. They couldn't afford to shoot Shego, and they couldn't afford to rush her when her hands were still charged. That was fine with her, they undoubtedly underestimated the speed and power of plasma.

Shego let the charge flow through her, letting the plasma build up from the aura that silently surrounded her, flowing through her limbs like cables until they hit her hands. The reaction was sudden and fierce, green fire combusting into the air around her outstretched arms before it snaked its way through the air, dissipating rapidly and disappearing altogether before it met the two targets.

_That_, Shego mused as she watched the fire falter in midair, _wasn't supposed to happen._ She knew what came next when her powers backfired, and wasn't disappointed when the pain ripped back from her hands and spread down her arms. Like her muscles were being pulled apart from the bone and liquid fire was being poured in between. It hurt, hurt like all manners of hell and worse than almost anything she'd ever encountered. She even blacked out for a half-second as she fell to her knees.

Now was their turn. Her attack having failed, they moved soundly and swiftly, scattering their firearms to the side. The one to her left jumped to the side around the table, one foot gracefully sliding against the tiles to angle himself towards her even mid-jump. To her right, her opponent chose an easier approach, launching up onto the table in a single bound, then crossing the distance to her in a second step.

In that moment she cursed herself and her frailties. Her lack of sleep, her over-exertion earlier downstairs, her obvious and more hidden dangers of having a body that could generate enough plasma to burn through steel. She especially cursed that last one, and what it was doing to her right now.

_Not now… I still have things I need to do…_

They were expecting Shego to be the victim, to casually roll over in her moment of pain and let them subdue her in the second afterwards. But she'd made a habit of never being the victim, whether it be from casual quips to outright violence. It just wasn't her style.

In the next second, the man bounding from her right awkwardly pirouetted after catching his foot on the chair she kicked sideways. To her left she loosed one of the eggs stored in a pouch on her side, filled with a black goop with the consistency of oatmeal and the adhesiveness of duct tape.

She clutched her arms close to her body, regardless of the pain welling up in them, and dashed out while they rolled to their feet. Judging by their speed, they would be only seconds behind, and she needed to be fast about this.

She took the first turn after the lobby, a conference room where she hastily slipped the lock closed before dashing through. Another two doors down she slipped inside, quickly and quietly shutting the door behind her. This was a normal office, swanky and upscale, but no other exits available. It didn't seem that they'd heard her though, and she could hear them lightly dash through the corridor she'd just been in.

Shego counted to four, then flipped open Chris' phone. "Wade," She called in lieu of greetings, "I need you to contact a chef named Moretti Lisandro in Italy. Tell him to head over to Sienna's place, there'll be a blanket in the hamper just inside from the garage. He needs to get whatever's in that blanket to a Sergeant Price, I'll leave it up to you to find him."

When she finally took the time to breath and bite down the gasp of pain that tried to escape through her teeth, Wade finally answered, "Shego, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, just do it, and hurry up." She hesitated a moment, still unsure whether to trust the boy. Though, it wouldn't be hard to track much of her life through the names she'd just give him, so she didn't know why she should stop now. "I found Kim. No sign of Monique yet, but- Fuck…"

Another wave of pain flashed through her arms. It was dulling considerably, but still more than she would've liked to bare. That meant no more plasma too, any more could upset the delicate balance in her body and send her reeling into a relapse. The last thing she could afford was to spend the next several months in a hospital bed.

She flicked the phone closed without another word. The longer she waited, the more numb the pain in her backfired arms would be, but the closer Kim would get to death. She was all too sure that Kim would go through with it for her friend too, the look in her eyes hadn't been the same fire she knew and appreciated so much from the redhead.

Shego didn't stop to think, just pressed her back against the door and slipped out silently.

**Elsewhere…**

Bobbo had been much gentler to Kim than the person he handed her off to. This man was short and fit, with a grizzled face and a scar gracing one blind eye. He treated Kim with contempt, grasping her arms painfully behind her back with one arm.

"We'll take care of the other girl." Bobbo said, tapping Frankie on the arm to draw him away. There was a certain trepidation in the way the two were holding themselves. They both regarded Kim with a look over their shoulders as they passed, eyes locking on hers in a way that didn't convey the lethality of men who could possibly murder.

She gave them a light smile, and Bobbo returned it in kind before they disappeared. It occurred to her only then that the massive bushy man had fallen for her, for her friendly smile and kind eyes. It was apparent through a gaze that had spent years judging tense situations, apparent in the timid way he held himself around her, and apparent through his own eyes. But before she'd even had a chance to say anything, he was gone, his friend disappearing around the corner with him.

It troubled her that she could so easily read a man she knew through all of three encounters, and even when it seemed that Shego was being so forward, she still couldn't piece together the thoughts behind those eyes of hers. Through the last day of captivity, probably the most posh 'cell' she'd ever been in really, Shego had never strayed far from her mind.

"You know, Kimberly- I can call you Kimberly, right?" She nodded dumbly. Carter had only managed to half-drag her from her own pit of thoughts. "You're not all what I was expecting."

They walked in silence; Kim, Carter, and the trio of guards, which dropped into a duo when one of them hung back and disappeared. Besides the grizzled beast that held her in his grasp, there was another, a blonde kid with a lazy eye that occasionally glanced at her body rather than acknowledging her.

When she remained silent, Carter continued. "I'm not dense. I get reports about you all the time. Fast, peppy, near invincible, from what I've heard."

"I'm sorry," Kim didn't know why she was apologizing, she still didn't feel like talking. "I'm just- It's been a weird week."

"Is that why your sidekick isn't here?" He asked. She tensed, for which her escort gripped her more painfully around the wrists, before relaxing again.

"You weren't lying, you are a good judge of situations," Kim mused morosely in reply. This time he was silent, a sudden tension filling the air between them. He wasn't the only one, Kim had grown a second sense about these things too. "Then you know you should let us go."

"Maybe." He half agreed. It was true that in the last moment the air had suddenly grown dangerous, and he knew something bad, morbidly bad, was going to happen. "But I can't afford to."

He recognized the subtle shift between depression and preaching before she spoke. "Why?"

"We all have our bosses, Kimberly. Mine is more fickle than most."

"The man on the phone," She surmised. "I can help."

"I doubt that." There was an unspoken moment between the two, as if Carter had added that he may have been cause for the suddenly impermeable air that had gathered around them, the tension enhancing tenfold.

They were approaching another hallway by now, and Kim felt the need to talk him out of this mistake more now than ever. "You don't have to do anything, I can help you, _we_ can help. Who would be stupid enough to stand up to me and Shego?"

"You don't understand the way things work around here, Kimberly," Carter shot back, frowning now. With a quick gesture, the grizzled hand at Kim's back loosened to give Carter his sidearm. Neither of them noticed the blond with the greedy eyes inconspicuously raising his in Carter's direction.

"If I don't kill you now, Bronson shows up and we're all fucked. Not just me and my boys here, my family and their family as well. We all have too much riding on what you lost." He swallowed, but a quick gesture had her sent to her knees, hands now wrapped behind her head. Killing was in his repertoire, it was engrained in his past as a thug for the mafia, but he hadn't held a gun since before he'd gotten married, and it showed in the shaking hand and suddenly parched lips.

The blond at his back lowered his gun ever-so-slightly. The grizzled man at his side stepped back, his expression not one of pleasure or enjoyment, but a sad and cold reality that he lived in.

"I'm sorry, Missus Possible," Carter finished, "It's nothing personal."

"I'm sorry too." Kim whispered silently, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

So, the terrible fear in her gut was a precursor to her own death. She had a habit during times like these, a habit of stopping to think about what people would think when she was gone. In Italy, nearly a week ago now, she'd thought they would find out that she was a lesbian secretly married to Shego. That was undoubtedly still true, they would still find out, if her death was ever publicized. But now Ron would react with anger, Monique with guilt, and Shego…

Shego reacted quite soundly with the full extent of her power, snapping Kim back to reality. The green bolt of plasma she threw grew and grew.

Kim hadn't even noticed her there, at the end of the hall she had been dropped to her knees in, but there she was, anger, fear, and pain written very clearly on her face, hands outstretched from where she'd fired her powers off. The sheer power of the blast had singed the hair on the back of Kim's head, torching a good section of the wall as it passed. It reacted violently with the windows at the end, blowing a hole large enough for a hummer to drive through and lighting up the night sky outside even brighter.

There was nothing left of Carter or the man with one good eye, probably charred bodies still flying down to the street below. The other guard had run off himself, leaving his sidearm behind.

But Kim wasn't paying attention to any of that, she was watching Shego, who's hands were openly shaking. She still couldn't tell what lie behind the villainess' eyes besides fear, anger, and pain. There was no telling what it was at, at her first kills, at the heroine almost dying, or the sudden rush of blood that burbled up from her mouth and the sudden clench of her body that sent her to her knees.

**Slightly Later…**

Shego awoke feeling very clammy, very queasy, and very, very sick. The world returned in a dull roar and a faint blur of lights and colors, and she was only slightly aware that her eyes had been open for some time and someone was still calling out her name.

She lolled her head about, trying to find the source of the annoying chirp that kept trying to keep her awake. There it was, just a few feet away, possibly. A bright orange thing with a blotch of white in the center. Like the ass of a hairless orangutan.

She found herself laughing at the comparison, only to bite back the bile that rose to her throat. Coppery.

"Shego!" Kim shouted once more before she finally snapped herself enough awake to recognize her.

"Kim?" She managed to mumble.

She heard the still-fuzzy hero release a giant sigh of relief. "Thank god, I thought you were going to die."

"Don't count me out yet, Princess," Shego mumbled back. She tried blinking her eyes open several times, until a hard sting flared across her face. Someone had just pistol-whipped her, and she didn't doubt it would leave a nasty bruise for a few minutes after.

At least she saw enough to tell where she was. It wasn't the same room she'd found Kim and Carter in originally, this one was much bigger, much more polished, and the desk was about twice the size of the last one. What was it with these people and offices? Why not a nice old dungeon?

The room was far from empty. Besides her and Kim there were the two suited guards, the blonde kid she'd seen run off a while ago, a older man staring out a window, and another, taller blond she hazily remember having captured her and Kim before she passed out. He was wearing another suit under his guard uniform, a mix between Bobbo's and the helmeted goons.

The old man turned away from the window, and a look of realization crossed Shego's face. "Parker Bronson…"

"You know him?" Kim asked from beside her. She was still aware of the sicklier green sheen to Shego's face and the way her head barely managed to keep itself up, but she'd been curious about this bunch herself.

"She did the odd job for me, back when I was setting this place up," The man, Bronson, explained as he regarded Shego's grinding teeth.

"I should have known it was no coincidence that your building is just across the street." She groaned in reply.

"This is my building now," He snapped. "I made sure I was deputy director here, and now the director himself is ash in the Pacific skyline." Bronson limped forward, coming well within optimum sight-range for the two girls. He was just as Shego remembered him, and nothing Kim hadn't expected. A weathered face with a thin jaw, bushy eyebrows and curly gray hair. His eyes were probably the most important aspect of him, always thin, always filled with scorn.

"You did me a favor, Shego, now I just need one more, and everything will be set." Shego noticed the gun in his hand before Kim did. It was much smaller than the over-sized decoration Carter had been carrying, but still a sleek silver weapon that was both menacing and functional. Guns, she knew, were the easiest device with which to torture and kill, also the messiest.

He raised it, pointing it square at the redhead's chest, and Shego felt her heart fall and the words escape her mouth without thought, "I don't know anything, Kim knows where it is!"

"Good," Bronson replied, narrowed eyes switching targets from Kim to Shego. He lowered the gun towards her before either of them could react and fired. Kim screamed her name, definitely not helping things.

For all the wounds Shego had ever received, she had never been shot once in her life. In reality, there just weren't situations like these where people were held at gunpoint. They either finished in all of three seconds, or they never started, just quick random shots and everyone scatters. Now she looked down at the hole that went through the armrest of the chair she was strapped to. She could see smoke wafting up from the bleeding spot that was growing on her leg.

It was an odd feeling, like the pain was enough to block out every other little thing in her mind but she just hadn't realized it yet. One second she was sick, but fine, and the next second it felt like someone had just driven a white-hot stake through her tender flesh and hit it with a sledgehammer just to be safe.

"Fuck!" She screamed after what seemed like an eternity to everyone else, pulling against her bindings and thrashing in her chair. The headache and sickness was suddenly the least of her worries.

Bronson turned back to his redheaded captive, only to find her panting and her eyes wide and distant. He wondered only briefly if she was having a heart attack, or some sort of panic attack, but it was only an instant before he realized she snapped.

Kim hadn't been put in the same restraints Shego had, instead just a loose tie around her hands behind the chair's back. It was too easy for her to flick them aside, not even the same quality Drakken put in his knots. She disarmed Bronson with a quick strike of her wrist, before he even had the chance to raise his pistol, and snapped in him the chest with her other palm, easily sending him several feet backwards. A second later and she was holding the gun, pointing it down at him. His team of guards hadn't even had the chance to react yet.

Shego hissed at the pain in her leg, but was otherwise silent. In all her life, she hadn't even known that Kim could hold a gun. She figured it was like kryptonite in her hands, but the steely resolve on the girl's face was almost frightening.

"Untie her," Kim growled through her teeth. When no one moved, she altered the angle of the pistol ever so slightly and shot a hole in the floor next to the sitting Bronson. It probably deafened the ear it landed near. "Untie her!"

"Do it," Bronson nodded towards the man next to Shego, the tall blonde. She wasn't surprised to see a badge on his belt that said Charlie.

Kim stepped back towards Shego, worry apparent in her face and voice. "Can you stand?"

"I'll manage, I've had worse." Shego promised.

Bronson scowled at the two. "You really think this is the end, girl? You think you'll just walk right out of this building?"

"You hurt my wife, we'll play your stupid little games after she's okay," It was shocking how Kim could growl so fiercely at Bronson and his allies, then turned and whisper so tenderly to Shego. It was more shocking to Shego what Kim had just said, and the determination she was putting into this sudden moment.

With Kim's help, Shego rose to her feet, very slowly limping across the office and out the door, every step taken under the watchful aim of four guns, at least. As soon as they were out of range, Kim swept Shego off her feet and rushed to the elevator, hitting the buttons as fast as she could once they were inside.

The door slid closed just as the group rounded the corner. "That was…" Shego started, sliding to the floor.

"Yeah…" Kim agreed. "Are-"

"It didn't go through. It's not really bleeding too much either." She was holding her leg regardless. She still looked like shit, but Kim had to note how she didn't really care what Shego looked like. She'd seen her in makeup, dresses, bikinis, ruined jackets and frayed shirts. Now here she was, looking like the same powerful and independent woman she always was, but with a sickly glow to her, shaky breaths, pain etched in her face, and a nauseous shudder to her body.

All that mattered was that this was Shego. Kim was somewhat guilty to admit that she looked gorgeous, even if in her own mind and only there. Still, she pushed the thoughts from her mind and leaned down, tearing a strip off her own shirt to make a hasty bandage. There was a sharp intake from her patient as she skillfully wrapped and tightened the bit of cloth around the leg.

"Still hurts like a bitch," Shego hissed.

"Shego… I'm so sorry I brought you into this." Kim practically blubbered. She clutched her wife's head between her hands, resting her forehead against hers until they could all-but see into the back of their eyes. "And Monique. I just-"

Shego shushed her with a finger before she could continue, but the tears were already flowing. She offered the best friendly face she could manage through the pain. "Kimmie... Princess-" She muttered, but cut herself off as she leaned forward and kissed the beautiful redhead in front of her before she even knew what she was doing.

She realized seconds later that this was not what she should have been doing, but by then Kim had already pushed them both down and was straddling her lap, deepening the kiss with the same ferocity she'd just showed Bronson. She couldn't tell what was more surprising, Kim holding a person up with a gun, or Kim kissing her back. She couldn't tell because all she was focused on was how wonderful and perfect Kim's lips felt, and how, despite not being sweet, the taste of her was just so addicting, so intoxicating.

After almost three floors, Kim pulled away, staring into Shego's eyes. They were practically a mirror of her own, both just subtle shades away of green, and both shared the same confusion and indecision. Even Shego's pain was forgotten.

"Shego, I…" _Here it comes. The boyfriend, the family, the 'straight talk'…_ Shego swallowed in fear despite herself. "I just don't know what I'm feeling. It's so confusing. I'm still mad at you though," She ended with a joke, laughing lightly against Shego's face. It brought a smile even out of the pained villainess.

"Of course. But that was still your fault," She joked back, before sobering significantly. "Look, I- Can we finish this later."

"Yeah." Kim nodded in agreement. "Elevators probably aren't the place for these talks."

"I was more worried about the guns that are going to be waiting for us at the bottom."

"Doy." Kim replied, giggling. Regardless, she rose from Shego's lap, looking for an exit.

After several minutes they finally managed to escape the box of death. Elevators, more often than not, didn't have escape hatches at the top like movies always promised they did. The specific one they were in did have a felt wall to it, and after that had been stripped away, there was a thin sheet of aluminum on the other side, which was basically all the protection it had in most places.

"Shego," Kim called as they had prepared to make use of one of Chris' more volatile eggs, "Are you sure you're okay? You were bleeding when-"

"I'm fine, Kim." Shego replied curtly. The redhead seemed slightly hurt by the use of her real name and the sharp tone she'd used, but let the subject drop to escape.

They busted through the dissolving wall after laying low on the opposite side of the elevator car, taking only a fraction of a second to exit but a minute or more letting the acid work. Shego found it awkward and painful being carried by Kim in one arm, but also, in a way, strangely romantic. From there on it was just a matter of retracing Shego's footsteps, and hooking up with the car down in the parking garage.

All the while she had a terrible feeling gnawing at her gut, like someone was about to go and do something stupid.


	18. Pacific Capture

**A/N:** Edit 11-19-11. Almost done, almost ready for a new chapter. No significant changes in this one. **~VLU**

* * *

"Wait… Where's Monique?" It hadn't even occurred to Kim to ask until they had already reached the tunnel exit to the parking garage. She'd been so caught up with pouring over her confusing feelings with Shego, and now, as she helped her injured wife to the final door that stood between them and freedom, the missing girl finally nagged at her mind.

"We'll get her soon enough." Shego hissed back from the darkness. She just knew there were going to be guards waiting at the elevator shaft, and worrying about Monique wasn't in her plans for getting the goddamn bullet out of her goddamn leg.

"No, we have to-" Kim had already moved Shego to a wall just beside the door, turning back towards the entrance Shego had made into the building earlier.

"She can wait, we should-" But by then the redhead had already disappeared from sight, and Shego let out a low, foul curse as she stumbled against the wall for support. A strip of shirt did not make a proper tourniquet, and she'd already lost enough blood to make her dizzy, not to mention the after-burn of her powers sapping her strength.

With a queasy, clammy grip she fumbled along the wall and with the door handle that lead out into the parking garage. Her vision was dark, and without Kim's help she couldn't even manage to pull the door open more than an inch before she collapsed, darkness claiming her mind.

It wasn't the loving embrace of sleep she fell into, but a darkness that hardly managed to separate her mind from her body. She could feel the wet stone against her face for the first few moments, but in her mind she was somewhere else.

In her mind she was standing in a corridor, a corridor of twisted shadows that she could feel stretching on forever behind her. Before her it ended just short of being long, leading out into a sky of a night that twinkled with lights like multi-colored stars. None of this scared her, none of it but the men before her.

There were two of them, one with gnarled features and an unshaven chin that gave him a look of experience. He had the look of a man who had just wasted an entire game screwing around, only to realize when the bell rung that there was no more time to make a goal. She knew from that look alone that he regretted his life, but he wasn't mad at her for it. Just sad.

The other man's face was burned more into her eyes than that one though. He had an average look to him, graying hair, a short, wider nose, and a small chin that seemed to be taken up entirely by his lips, small as they were. It was his eyes that stood out. Two large blue orbs set against a backdrop of shadows and stars, so wide and shaken in fear that it resonated like a held note between them.

Suddenly she was afraid. Suddenly this was her fear. Suddenly she was the one dying, being burned alive and dusted over the Pacific skyline.

Suddenly she shot up from where she was sitting, gasping shaky breaths into her lungs. She felt a firm pair of hands try to push her down, but violently clawed them back, until she realized who they belonged to.

"Easy, girl, you need some rest," Chris told her, though she refused to slide back into the seat.

"Chris-? Where-?" The dizziness and headache overtook her, and Shego collapsed backward into the seat. One hand was held to her head in a desperate attempt to keep herself from losing consciousness again.

"I saw the door open, found you passed out on the other side." He explained.

Her eyes trailed over her surroundings. It was some sort of SUV, tinted windows, a wide back seat where she was situated, and enough room for Chris to sit in the middle without crushing her. Above her was a bag attached to the hand-grip above the door, a bag filled with what appeared to be water that fed through a tube into her arm. Saline, she realized.

"Yeah, thanks."

"I guess this means-?"

"Kim is free, but the stupid girl ran back in there." Shego groaned. "Trying to find Monique."

"That's good, right?" Chris replied, the look of relief on his face almost making Shego regret her next words.

"No, it's stupid. She doesn't know where Monique is, and she's running in there alone." She had to grind her teeth to keep the worry off her face. It was a stupid thing to do, and she would give the girl a good chewing out when she found her again.

"But she's invincible, right? She can handle it."

"No, she can't. You don't know her like I do," With a groan, she pulled the tube and needle from her arm, letting the drip fall to the seat. "You take away her happy place, her friends or some bullshit like that, and suddenly she's useless. Just good for getting herself killed."

"You shouldn't-" Chris moved to stop her when she started moving, sliding towards the door.

"I know I shouldn't, that doesn't mean I can afford not to."

He had to relent to that, but he surprised her with his next suggestion. "They're going to be doubling the guards and throwing the security systems online. We should do something about that first, before Kim does get herself killed."

"Like what?"

"As far as I know, the only power they have in here is that box between the alley and the lobby, and that generator in the maintenance tunnels. Saw some guards head down that way a second ago, though."

**Shortly Later…**

This had gone a lot easier when Kim had originally thought it out, not that a split-second decision like going all the way up here could really be considered thought out. In her mind, there was always a very exact way to win in these situations. You go to the highest point, you fight the head boss and his head minions, and you save the girl, located with said head boss and head minions.

That was a bit harder than it seemed when she found only the head minions and no head boss. There were four of them, all wearing practically the same armor, and all with, oddly enough, the same body types. They were fast, they were efficient, and they were inhumanly strong.

At the very least she was doing a good job avoiding them so far, and she could swear she was almost back up to where Bronson was waiting. Just almost though, and there was always those few inches to the next door that were lost when one of the four guards found her and unleashed a spray of explosive rounds in her direction.

They were no longer playing nice with her. She had noticed that in the first few seconds.

She also needed a way to outwit their machine-like tracking skills. Just hiding didn't seem to do shit for her, and she was quickly tiring.

Bronson watched her dance about from above in the grand office. These soldiers were doing nicely, well worth the money put into them. It was time to implement the next phase in his plan though, all he needed was the other girl.

When Kim finally broke into the grand office, he stood behind the desk, unperturbed. She was quickly knocked off her objective when the four soldiers surrounded, temporarily out of ammo and ready for a close-range beat down. They surprised her in that regard too.

"Possible, so nice of you to join us," Bronson said with a fake air of hospitality. He could even make sounding nice sound evil. "I really have to thank you for coming back, if you didn't I might have been in trouble."

"Is that so?" Kim said with a grunt, one of Charlie's kicks sliding off her arms. Besides the man she recognized as Charlie, and the twins that had fought Shego earlier, there was just one more man in the group. He had a more personable face, set in a grim scowl hidden by unkempt brown hair. "And how's that?"

"Well, now that Carter has been killed, and by your girl Shego no less, we can finally get rid of these frauds and put some real order in Pacific." He ignored the scowl Kim shot at him as she was finally tackled and pinned. "With Carter killed, control of the Pacific Global Justice branch goes to the Deputy Director."

"Let me guess, you?" Kim hissed, barely keeping the brown-haired soldier from crushing the air from her larynx.

"Exactly. We still have-" The power cut out, and suddenly the group found themselves bathed in darkness lit only by the expansive windows. Bronson frowned, having to squint to tell one silhouetted figure from the other. Kim had apparently escaped from her pin, and managed to down one of the twins with a few well-placed shots. He picked up the phone at his desk, checking to make sure it still worked before dialing the lobby. "What happened down there?"

"_Sorry, boss. Some drunk just plowed through the wall, took down all the breakers in one swipe."_

"Shego?" He asked, frowning.

"_No. Just some black guy, built like a fuckin' quarterback though. One of my guys is turning on the generator now."_

"_No such luck,"_ Another voice cut in, _"Tubes are rotted through or something. Turned it on and it filled up the entire room with gas."_

He pursed his lips. There was no need to yell at the hapless guards, but that didn't mean he couldn't scowl at the situation. "Well, get up here and watch the upper levels. And get the driver out of here, we don't want the cops showing up and causing a scene."

"_-The hell? Get his pants back on- Wait- Grab him!"_ It was suddenly apparent that the lobby guard was no longer talking to Bronson at all. _"Don't let him get in the doors- Damn it!"_

"_This is the booth on level one, a large black man just ran by swinging his dick at me. I think we're going to need some more men down here."_

Bronson groaned, slamming the receiver down. He felt the need to rub the bridge of his nose. If it wasn't Kim taking down his super-soldiers, it was someone shedding his pants on the first floor and running unrestricted through his building.

"What's the world coming to?"

**Meanwhile…**

After managing to sneak her way through the generator and back through her makeshift hole to the elevator, Shego was faced with her most daunting problem; fifty stories, no rest, and an injured leg. She leaned back in the shaft, resting in the shadows behind one of the support pillars that spider-webbed their way up the length of the building. As her back pressed up against the wall, only then did she feel the ladder behind her, which, in hindsight, would've saved her a lot of grief on her first pass.

With a resigned sigh Shego started up, managing a three-limbed hobble that was only marginally slower than a normal pace. It gave her plenty of time to worry about her wife and other people. Mostly her wife and Chris, since Monique wasn't exactly more than a passing acquaintance.

Kim, she could trust to at least handle herself until she was up there. Ron, Wade still didn't seem to have managed to get through to him, was still a no-show, and she had no misconceptions about Kim's relationship with the boy. It was clear that she loved him, and it was just as clear to her that Ron was the crutch that gave Kim the ability to do everything she did. He was her energy drink, so to speak, and without the ability to get in touch with him, Kim was pretty much spent before the fight even started.

She had a growing worry about Chris too. The boy wasn't much older than Kim was, but he still managed to act far more immature and came off as a jerk most of the time. But he wasn't really so bad, and he was smart enough to know what he could do to help and do that.

She'd left him with the instructions to barrel the car down the street and take out the power, and could only hope that he managed to escape without drawing any attention on himself. This was her fight, not his.

Any musing or debating she was doing in her head ended after the first twenty stories, replaced with burning muscles and a clammy sweat. She had to consciously force her muscles to keep moving after that, and even had to stop for a quick drink and to chew some trail mix to recharge herself just before she hit Monique's floor.

Thirty-five, from what she could tell, was the most secure of all the ones she'd been on so far. There was a grate that she gladly fell upon when she reached it, a maintenance semi-floor that lead to a door and what she could guess was a storage room for the blue-collar building workers. But even that had a keypad, thankfully an inoperative one.

She slipped in as quietly and quickly as she could manage on her leg, thankful that there were no guards waiting here. Still cautious, seeing as how Charlie had snuck up on her once already, she was thankful for this brief reprieve anyway. In her state, she wasn't liking her odds in a straight up fight.

Stupidly enough, the rooms and sections were marked like any other floor. Handling was done to one side, and on the other side were guarded suites, only one of which seemed to be guarded when she peeked around the corner.

A stirring straw and needle, dipped in a substance she really didn't want to know about, served to deal with the single guard waiting in the hallway. As he fumbled with the needled embedded in his neck, she snuck forward, handling the door with her signature efficiency.

"About time you came for me, Ki-" Monique, having launched at the girl as soon as the door opened, shrunk back from her prompt embrace when she realized just who it was. "Shego?"

"Doy," Shego responded, "You don't send a princess to do a knight's job, do you?"

"You're here for her, ain't 'cha?" Monique asked, lighting up in a smile that said she knew more than Shego let on.

"Guilty. But you were on the way, figured you could use a ride." She replied with a near flirtatious tone.

Monique responded with a wry grin. "From you? Girl, you look like you should be getting a ride to the hospital, not giving rides to impressionable young women."

"I was thinking more from you brother. He's waiting in an Explorer down in the parking garage." Shego rested herself against the doorframe with a inaudible groan, more a puff of air from her suddenly famished lungs. "First left, next right, third doorway on your right."

Monique passed her with a appreciative nod, only pausing to address her after she was already out in the hallway. "You really do care for her, don't you?"

"You're not the first person to ask me that question. Now get out of here, I've got a princess to rescue." She finished with her signature snark.

Taking one last look at the injured woman, Monique jogged away. Anyone else, and she would've dragged her to the hospital without a second thought. Really, besides Kim, Shego was the only person who could pull a stunt like going up against these people and rescuing her wife with a bullet hole in her, looking like she was about ready to collapse.

So, Monique knew it would work out somehow. Shego wasn't so sure, especially when she nearly passed out after Monique had rounded the corner, only managing to shake off the feeling and stabilize herself at the last second.

She had lost track of herself and her surroundings while she talked to Monique, but now that she was slightly more conscious, she was suddenly aware that she wasn't alone. The presence standing behind her was impressive, and the last thought she had before she was unceremoniously clubbed in the back of the head was that Bobbo was definitely quieter than he looked.

**Meanwhile…**

It was getting entirely ridiculous. In the last half an hour, his multi-billion dollar super soldiers had not only managed to not stop Kim, but three of them had already been rendered unconscious by the girl. Now the battle was between her and the brown-haired one.

Bronson had never learned their names. He knew them only as the twins, the blonde, and the brown-haired one. But it was clear that this one was more impressive than the other specimens were, far more. He had the experience and the skill to hold off Kim's lightning-fast punches and kicks and return them in kind, but it was still clear that he was losing.

Kim managed to temporarily stun the soldier with an impressive full-nelson and suplex, entirely eliminating Bronson's once mighty desk in the process. While her enemy was incapacitated, she left no time to recover before going after the head-honcho himself.

"I wouldn't do that, Possible." Bronson warned, taking a step back. The look on Kim's face was enough to tell him that the thrashing he would receive would be worse than what she'd given to his goons. This wasn't the way the world worked though, and he knew it. Good guys never finished first. In the end, good guys always lost, and people like him were the reason for that. "Unless you want something to happen to your friend."

Kim hesitated when he pulled the phone from his pocket, holding it up near his head like a deadly weapon. He continued, pressing her weakness and a speed-dial on his phone, "Someone get Possible's friend and kill her."

"No…"

Bobbo answered, rather than one of Bronson's guards that had been posted before. _"Sorry, boss. The girl seems to have escaped."_ Suddenly the tables had been turned, and the fallen look on Kim's face turned feral, while Bronson's scowl inverted as well. _"We've captured Shego, though."_

"Kill her." Bronson snapped without a second thought.

"Wait!" Kim dropped to her knees, her expression far more twisted than it had been when Monique was threatened. Worry was written in her eyes, and she swallowed fearfully before pleading to Bronson, "Don't, I'll do whatever you want."

"Good." He replied, a cruel smile on his face. "Belay that. Bring her to my office, we'll deal with her there."

"_Yes, boss."_

Downstairs, Shego was only dimly aware of being lifted into Bobbo's hands and carried up the twenty flights of stairs. The sweet slumber that came with being knocked out escaped her grasp in a haze of twisted shadows and blue eyes staring into her soul. She groaned pitifully when she slipped back into consciousness.

"Calm down, girl." Bobbo drawled in his characteristic grating tone. "You'll have a helluva headache, but you'll live."

"Pro'lly," Frankie jibed from in front of them, leading the way up the stairs with a pistol and flashlight at the ready. "Bronson, he's a reals bads guy, y'know. Ca'ta sho'd keep 'im from icin' anyone insides 'doe."

"Good guess," Bobbo snapped back, "Where is Carter anyway? And where are the damn lights?"

Shego chose to keep her mouth shut, but shifted uncomfortably in the giant man's arms. Her hand was starting to fall asleep. It felt almost normal after her slight problem earlier, only the tense ache of over-used muscles from climbing up and down the damn tower twice already, but she was also aware of the pain in her head that kept her from concentrating well enough to summon her signature green flames.

"You better not be planning anything." Her transient mule warned.

She rolled her eyes, closed as they were, but continued to shift. Bobbo surprised her in many regards, one of those being an extremely comfortable ride. "You got me, I was really planning to flash-fry you-" She groaned, "-And crawl up twenty damn flights with a killer headache."

"You're in luck," He replied, pushing through the doors after Frankie into a familiar lobby, "Last stop, better hurry." From his gruff tone, she couldn't tell whether he was joking or actually being helpful. What she really knew was that she still felt like collapsing, and was in no mood to take down the two officers.

"Just five more minutes, ma." She mumbled as the wide double-doors leading to Bronson's master office were swung open by the thinner of the duo. They took several steps in before Shego was deposited onto the floors, held aloft just so she could remain on her knees. Her poor, battered knees, one of which flared in pain as weight was put onto it, snapping her wide awake.

"Shego!" Kim shouted, struggling against the hold Charlie had her in. Her eyes held a unique fear and frustration that Shego couldn't quite understand. What she didn't know, and didn't really care to know, was that for the entire trip up, Kim had been listening to the ramblings of a irritated old man and his plan to replace a government funded entity that held special exemptions with an entire crew of Italian mobsters. What she did notice was that the fear in Kim's eyes didn't just stop at her, but stretched in the general vicinity of her two captors.

"Hey, Princess. You didn't let your hair down, and the elevators weren't working, so these two fine gentleman gave me a lift." She didn't care if Kim didn't get the fairytale reference, the slightly relieved smile she got for her sarcasm was reward enough.

But when Bronson lifted his pistol to Kim's head her humor vanished. This was getting old, and it was about time for Shego to end it.


	19. Pacific Scuffles

**A/N:** Edit 11-19-11. **~VLU**

* * *

"Alright, tell me what you want."

"Why are you here?" It wasn't Bronson who replied, but Kim, asking in a tone that was full of regret and hope at the same time. "You made it perfectly clear, just go our separate ways, so why did you come back for me?"

Silence answered her, and Shego's expression was unreadable to the redheaded heroine. She hung her head and pain flashed across her face, not the physical pain Shego was in, but a deep, confusing, emotional turmoil that she couldn't understand. She didn't know why Shego's silence hurt so much.

"You two done?" Bronson drawled above her. Neither of his captives moved to answer. "Good. I'll spare you the details, but there were some very important slips of paper in Italy. They got lost in a blanket, a blanket I heard you have. I get those, and your girl here might live." _Might._ That was the keyword there. Bronson's cocky smirk and tempered emotions told Shego that there was no chance he'd let either of them walk out alive.

"Have you ever seen a comet strike, Parker?" Shego asked, rising her head from her slumped posture. Her eyes fixed on him, and out of reflex he shrunk back. "I have. Just a little hunk of rock falls from the sky and suddenly buildings turn to dust and metal runs like magma." There was fire there, behind the dark green orbs, a feral nature that seemed to spark as soon as his unspoken words had threatened her wife. "She dies, and the last thing you'll see is a comet striking."

His fear didn't show, instead turned into a cocky scowl, just the lightest narrowing of eyes that he'd probably given a thousand men before ordering their demise. "So, we both want the girl to live, then. Do we have a deal?"

"Italy, Montario al Vomano. A little villa in the hills." She replied without lowering her gaze.

Kim looked like she halfheartedly wanted to talk Shego out of this, or warn her about something. "Shego…"

"You'll want a pen for this-" Shego continued, before giving up the address. Bronson could only guess that it was right, despite the defiant aura in Shego's eyes. He didn't get as high as he was today by trusting people, but that didn't mean he couldn't see the truth when it showed up.

"Good. You four-" Bronson motioned to the men standing cautiously around Shego; Bobbo, Frankie, one of the twins, and Charlie, who'd been holding onto Kim, "-Take her downstairs and wait for me. I've got a call to make." _And a princess to kill._

"Shego!" Kim called, now under the grip of the brunette hiding in the shadows.

"Don't worry about me, Princess, just don't go dying on me yet. We still have plenty of things to talk about." Even as she spoke she was hefted to her knees, nearly buckling under her own weight. Charlie half-pushed, half-carried her out into the lobby, his grip iron-tight and surprisingly strong.

She hardly had time to take stock of her situation and captors. Bobbo, Frankie, Charlie, and a twin. She trusted the first two not to kill her, but as long as Charlie and faceless twin were there, she had little doubt she wouldn't be able to fight them off. Not to mention Charlie and faceless were both sporting some new weapons. Same pistols, perhaps, but Charlie had an impressive grenade-belt strapped to his torso.

Before the doors swung closed behind them, Kim called out one last time in a near-panicked voice. "Bob, Frank, watch out!"

That wasn't what Shego was expecting. _Be safe!_ Maybe, or perhaps _Good luck_, but that? And not even directed at her. She didn't have time to worry about it though, being unceremoniously shoved across the lobby. The five of them were no longer alone, there were guards forming a circle around the room, probably a dozen or more of them. Global Justice goons, but with darker blue uniforms and full masks covering their faces. Not to mention the use of guns she was pretty sure were illegal for a organization that wasn't supposed to take lives.

They were mostly ignored, passing right by the lot of goons on their way to the stairs, though they picked up a decent escort of three men. Charlie held up a hand as they passed into the stairwell, stopping the rest of Shego's escort in their tracks.

"You have a bad feeling about this, Frankie?" She heard Bobbo mutter to his friend over her shoulder.

"'De worst, Bobbo."

Inside the stairwell it was just the two of them, Shego, and her tall, blonde, handsome escort. She hadn't been this close to him before, but now that she was she could see his expression more clearly, even if only over her shoulder. It was dead, that was the only way she could really describe it. Ashen-faced, with dark rings under his eyes. Even his eyes, which looked like they should've been a nice, clear blue, were clouded over and dull of human emotion.

"They said you used to be a good kid, Charlie." Shego spoke, the only sound in the stairwell save for her uneven steps. Charlie made no noise as he walked, didn't breath while she talked, but the echoing bang that came from her feet made enough noise for the two of them. She was just lucky there were emergency lights, or she would've broken something long ago. "What do your friends up their have to do with any of this?"

"Robert and Franklin?" It was the first time she'd heard him talk, and she wasn't surprised to find his tone dead, so she just nodded. "They were Carter's men."

"So?"

"The other guards upstairs are Bronson's." Shego swallowed, a sharp intake of breath that was worse than her landing on her gimp leg. Suddenly that feeling of sickness that she was just managing to shrug off had come back. "They'll die, and you'll be blamed. The boss will be made out to be the hero, and his men will take over."

"And how- How can you let this happen?" Her words rang out, echoing painfully across the stairwell, but he refused to flinch.

"It is… Logical. When the old order fails, the new order is brought in. This way brings little chaos."

Shego had to grind her teeth to stem the tide of anger that welled in her. Bronson wasn't just a bastard, all these men were bastards, and all the men who followed them. They pushed through the door into the lower level, and she found herself chuckling morbidly as they entered the lobby to Carter's office.

"I'm glad you told me this, Charlie." She said through her crazed chuckles. The villainess was being led towards the elevator shaft. The doors had been propped open, and the elevator hung silent, its roof a foot down from the floor of their level.

"I was going to feel bad for killing you. Now- Now I think I'll be doing the world a service!"

Before the final word was off, a hand had slipped through her behind-the-back hold, lucky that Charlie had been carrying her this way with a single-handed grip. He pulled his gun from his holster with his right hand, still holding her right in his left, but it was met with her free hand before he could get it even pointed at her.

The gunshots rang off, a short burst of three from the semi-automatic pistol, flying far over her shoulder and into the elevator shaft. With a practiced flick of her wrist, the cartridge ejected from the gun. A twist of her torso moved the arm behind her back in front of her before he had the chance to wrench it, and suddenly the two were facing each other.

He wasn't even surprised or frightened when his eyes met hers, cold blue staring into a fiery green. In fact, his face didn't even twitch when her arms fought for dominance in the grapple, which quickly ended as a standstill. She was already panting in exhaustion.

"You really think you can beat us?" He asked tonelessly.

She raged at that. "Yes! Screw your fucking logic!"

As soon as she finished, Charlie heaved her back, slamming her into the ground and the breath out of her body. She hardly had time to breath out before it happened, just barely saving herself from being momentarily crippled. Each centimeter their grips on each others' arms moved was still a battle, one she was quickly losing, but now she was on the floor under him, her head lying out into the elevator shaft.

Shego, her lungs pounding from the impact, found it unthinkable that it had to be this elevator where she was about to die. She didn't focus as much on Charlie, since there was really nothing she could do to beat him with her powers as meager as they were and her body quickly draining of all its strength. But there was something about this elevator that she remembered, something she'd noticed when she'd struggled onto its roof the first time and rolled onto her back for those precious few breaths of air.

Atop the elevator, she hadn't even noticed it until Kim was gone, was a toolbox and a set of straps attached to the roof. The dinghy little red thing would be no help for her, but those straps, the type meant to hold a maintenance worker safely over a fifty story drop…

"Charlie-" She growled, her arms failing as the last few inches between them drained. As soon as his arms were unheeded, they pushed down on her throat, cutting off her wind-pipe and the air to her head. She gasped, grasping wildly behind her and down the foot of distance to the elevator roof. There were maybe ten seconds, at most, before she would pass out.

_Come on, come on! Be there!_ Dots flashed over her vision, clouding her sight of the blonde, and cutting off almost all the feeling to the rest of her body.

There, just as she was passing out, she found it. A thick strip of cord with a latch on the end for safety harnesses.

There was practically a second to spare, and she fumbled as fast as she could, pulling the safety-line up and attaching it to the first thing she found, the grenade belt that was looped sideways around his chest. She grasped the pin for the first grenade she found, flared her powers up with her other hand, and shot behind her just as she passed out from lack of blood to the brain.

She laid there, eyes rolled back in her head, lungs halted from their eternal struggle for breath. Her mouth hung open and her tongue, stuffy and thick now, hung just out of her mouth, as if still grasping for air.

_Shego!_

Shego gasped. Charlie had just flown off of her as the elevator lurched down, its only support to the cables that lifted it suddenly blown clear with a pin-point plasma shot to the top of the car. The car fell, dropping until the safeties clicked. But by then it'd already gone far enough to pull the cord attached to the blond strangling Shego tight.

For seconds there was silence, just the hoarse groan that told Shego she was alive and air was still in abundance. For seconds there was nothing.

And then. _Boom._

Shego weakly looked down to the grenade pin clutched in her grasp.

* * *

"_Yah' sista' is a babe." Frankie joked, elbowing his friend in the ribs once more. They'd been making their way home from another exciting school-day, taking the long way they both enjoyed so much. So far it wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience for Bobbo, not a particularly bad one either, though._

_Frankie, having just met Bobbo's sister this morning, had spent the entire day joking about how beautiful she was. And she was beautiful, Bobbo admitted that easily enough. Not just outside, she wasn't just dirty blonde hair and an above-average bust. She was one of the only people who saw Bobbo as more than just his weight and piggish face._

_She was like an angel, an angel who'd taken to his friend a bit too easily. Frankie was just a skinny kid with an average look to him though, not much for Bobbo to worry about._

"_Want me to bop you again?" He warned as his skinny friend jogged ahead. His tone was soft, but only around Frankie. Around other people it was hard and sharp, meant to scare them off before they could get close enough to hurt with words or actions._

_Frankie, in all his life, was the only one not like that. "Co'se not." He practically purred. "'S jus' we'ad, y'know. Seein' 'de two ah' you toge'da like 'dat."_

_For once, Bobbo's shifty friend quieted and slowed, walking beside Bobbo with his arms crossed behind his head and his gaze aimed at the sky. It was odd to see such a simple man be so thoughtful._

"_You don' mind if ah ask ha' out, do ya?" He asked after a second._

_Now was Bobbo's turn to be thoughtful, not that he was ever the type to speak without thinking all his options through. His best friend and his sister… The more he thought about it, the more he realized that they were practically made for each other._

"_You hurt her, and there'll be words between us." Bobbo warned, once more adopting his signature harsh tone._

_Frankie just laughed, unafraid. "And if she hurts me?"_

"_There'll be words between me and her too." Bobbo smiled._

Today there were no smiles. Today he just coughed, grabbing his chest where the bullet had entered.

He wasn't sure who had shot first, all he knew was that one second everything was hunky dory, and the next bullets had gone off downstairs, the light pop of them like popcorn. But for two so experienced at gun ranges as he and his best friend were, he knew the difference well.

Then their own allies had turned on them, and Bobbo and Frankie had acted before they got the chance to get a shot off. Bobbo had crushed his up against the wall, Frankie had flipped his over his shoulder.

There was still one left, and as Bobbo and Frankie scrambled through the door and down the stairs, he got a shot off. Luckily, Bobbo had been behind, catching the bullet with his own natural layer of defense. It hurt like a bitch, but that thing would've destroyed his friend, and he was glad to take the bullet instead.

It did make walking harder though, and he found himself tripping and scrambling down the stairs, making an ungodly racket as he rolled into his back halfway down and unleashed his own sidearm. Frankie had his gun out from the start, and everyone lost themselves in a frenzy of bullets.

Bobbo was hit two more times, blood already seeping down to cover and slick the thin, gray stairs, Frankie was miraculously unharmed, and two of the three lay dead at the top of the stairs. The third was still twitching, but his blood pooled with the others, forming a ugly waterfall that dripped towards them.

"Bobbo!" Frankie cried, leaning down to his friend.

"I'm fine," Bobbo coughed, clutching his wounds. That was something to be said about being a mountain of a man. He'd seen Shego's one little leg wound, and it had practically crippled her. These three didn't hurt as much as her one though, and they all seemed to have gotten stuck in places that didn't make him feeling like he was dying. That, he counted as a good thing.

"Just give me a second to catch my breath." He finished, grinning up at his friend as their eyes met, tension seeping from the atmosphere as their similar brown gazes locked. A second later, despite having just killed and nearly been killed, they were grinning like fools on the top of the world.

Over Frankie's shoulder he saw it, the third man who was still barely clutching to life. Now he was clutching his gun in a shaky grasp, raising it straight at the two partners. Bobbo reached for his own gun, raising it just in time to fire off another volley of shots, but not quite in time to keep his enemy from doing the same.

The stairwell rang out in gunfire once more, an echoing roar that reached all the way down to the ground from their perch in the clouds. The lights of the pistols' muzzles didn't reach nearly so far, but they nearly blinded Bobbo. Not before he saw one of his lucky shots strike the man in his head, and him slump forward onto the stairs.

Bobbo grinned now, though, feeling miraculously unharmed himself from the second volley. "Good shit, Fran-"

Before he could finish his sentence, his friend slumped to his knees, falling forward into Bobbo's arms. For a second he just held his friend as he shivered into Bobbo's arms, but then he let him fall back into his hands so he could look him over. Blood was spurting out over his white shirt from at least three places, compounded with a sickly shiver and thick red liquid dripping from his lips. His eyes were wide, shaken, and locked on Bobbo's own, which mimicked them exactly.

"F-Fr-Frankie?" It was as if his entire world had just been pulled out from under his feet. As if nothing existed anymore save for the man who coughed feebly in his arms and the tears that suddenly stung his eyes and flooded over his puffy cheeks.

Frankie coughed once, almost managing a word. Then he slumped back, his gaze ever-forward and his body limp in Bobbo's hands.

"Frankie! Don't do this- You can't do this. Now's not the time to fall asleep!" The sobbing man clutched his friend to his chest, stroking his hands through the scraggly brown hair that had become matted with cold sweat and half a dozen sources of blood. "Wake up, Frankie. Now's not the time…"

Shego had never seen a grown man cry, not like that. Not the wailing sobs she was greeted with when she managed to reach the stairwell once more.

Bobbo was sitting against the wall opposite her, clutching the lifeless body of Frankie to him as tight as he could. The bawling, the moaning, he'd become no more man than child. She'd never wanted to see a man cry before, and she never wanted to see one cry again.

Out of shock and torment, the man let his friend down. His eyes passed right over Shego, looking right through her, right through everything around her. The only thing that seemed to matter to him were the pack of cigarettes he pulled out from his pocket with a grip that shook so much it couldn't get one into his mouth.

She limped further up the stairs, cautious not to disturb Bobbo or the body at his feet. He was still twice her size, still dangerous. But there was something about him that made her stop before passing. It made her turn to him, limping forward to whisk the cigarette from his shaky grasp.

Finally he noticed her, his gaze locking onto her with a righteous fury that she ignored in favor of lighting the smoke. She replaced the thin cigarette between his lips and turned.

"Girl," Some feeling seeped through his voice when he spoke. Maybe he wasn't all dead after all. "Can you hand me that gun?"

She turned, first to him, then to the pistol lying on the stairs, half-covered in a pool of blood and bodies. The entire thing sickened her, and this was bound to be a bad idea, but the entire tower was made of bad ideas.

He looked rather surprised when the bloody pistol landed on his lap. But by the time he'd looked up again, Shego had already limped forward and out the door.

The gun was placed beside him, and he pushed himself to his knees. Frankie, still lying at his feet, was the most sickening sight to him. He was still the most important person in the world to Bobbo. Every glance at him revealed a hundred memories that he'd taken for granted, a hundred different special little moments that no one in the entire universe would ever get close to. There was so much history there, and just looking down twisted that history into pain.

Bobbo bit back a sob as he shifted his friend's body, making him as comfortable as he could with all the tenderness he could manage. A surprising amount, given his stature, but by the time he was done, Frankie was lying peacefully with his arms crossed, not a single strand of hair sticking out. Finally, with shaky fingers, he closed the eyes that had journeyed with him through his entire life, and leaned down to place his lips chastely on Frankie's forehead.

**Upstairs…**

The guards from earlier had all retreated, she caught the last one rushing across Bronson's office as she limped in. She also caught two familiar non-faces there.

"I guess it's easier to frame one person without an army?" She asked, supporting herself on the doorframe. They'd already noticed her anyway, there was little reason to hide anymore.

The twins. They were much more visible now, compared to the low lighting she'd met them at in Carter's office. The windows around them stretched up and up, letting in the light of the pollution and hidden moon as well as the pulse of the city below them.

Now, unlike before, their shadows were cast up, down, and in a hundred different little directions around them. Like a hall of mirrors, mirroring shadows.

One lifted his gun, and she tensed in preparation of the fight to commence. Before he could fire the other snorted rudely, as if mocking his partner.

She got the feeling that neither of them were real big on words, but she could guess what was going on between them. Especially with her in such a sad shape.

_You really need a gun to take on her?_

She doubted he did either, but he seemed to take offense to the unspoken accusation and holstered the pistol. Definitely not big on talking.

Shego really was a sad sight. Even her unhealthy green color had drained from her face long ago. Sweat and blood matted her hair in a dozen different directions, and the back had been singed off when she'd nearly blown off her head downstairs. The only color to her face was the exhausted rings under her eyes and the ugly purple bruises around her cheekbone and throat. Her clothes were in similar disarray, an entire sleeve ripped off her coat where Chris had hooked her up to an IV, rips and shreds across her shirt, and a leg shredded on her pants and covered in blood.

Blood that hardly stopped flowing, she reminded herself before she limped towards her opponent. He stood, waiting for her, his arms raised in a near-comical way.

"Fisticuffs at dawn?" She asked, and wasn't far off.

He just smirked under his helmet.

The battle was in his favor from the get-go. It was in his favor since their very first meeting, really.

His punches were superhumanly strong and fast, though they started off slow, just testing the waters. It helped that he wasn't taking her seriously, but it was also insulting. She didn't need his pity. She hated pity with a vengeance.

She taught him that early on, when he sniped in a jab that purpled her chin and bloodied her lip, and she responded by easily popping his wrist out of joint. He howled and fell back, the first time she'd heard him make a noise even.

But after that moment of weakness, Shego was all over him. Her first jab came while he was undefended, cutting off his larynx, another blow was dealt right below the solar plexus, rushing the air from his lungs. It was entirely his fault for meeting her in a challenge like this. She knew how stupid it was to lower yourself to the level of your enemies.

That was another lesson taught by Shego when he came at her again, and she used his own power to wrench his shoulder out of joint by grasping his arm and swinging with his own punch.

"Kill the bitch!" He howled. His strength was nothing to her, not even with her injured. She was more than a match in skill and technique, with every blow landing on a pressure point, and ever grab making use of his own strength to injure him.

His twin pulled out his pistol, the same old boring gun she'd seen on Charlie and this boy. Deadly, but it was quickly getting old. She heard it before his twin did, the unique pop of the holster's clasp and hiss of metal escaping leather. It didn't resound high enough to pierce the full-helmet of her dueling opponent, and she used that against him when one twin took aim and fired, and the other twin took aim and punched.

He had no idea how, but suddenly his weaker punch was flying much farther, and his back burned as the exploding bullet pierced his spine, hardly managing to break his armor, but more than managing to explode his heart. There was a moment of lingering silence as his twin took in what just happened, and how Shego was now hiding underneath the soldier, having pulled him in front of the shot.

"Cast?" The living twin whispered fearfully. Shego reached for the corpse's gun, but he was faster, suddenly launching a barrage of bullets that caused her to flinch back behind the body. Blood exploded everywhere, coating the floor and herself. "Castor!"

_Well… Shit…_


	20. A Bloody End

**A/N:** Edit 11-19-11. And with that, the edits are complete and I'm entirely caught up on my own story. Expect an update soon. **~VLU**

* * *

"Why won't you die?" The question came out as a strangled sob in a brief second where the man, boy really, took his finger off the trigger.

Shego hardly had the stomach to look around the corpse she was using as a shield. It wasn't the fear of bullets, she wasn't the type to fear something you had little control over, it was the look on his face.

He had tossed his helmet during his first, gut-wrenching scream, and what lay beneath was a boy who had been as dead inside as Charlie had been. Now his eyes were wide in shock, irises just barely pinpricks in a backdrop of white that gave the effect of a child who'd just witnessed his first fear. It was something like withdrawal, the drugs that gave him the perfect physique had taken away his emotions, and now they were back and he wasn't ready. As a result, his face was twisted, the sobs having wracked his boyish façade until his lips stuck out and wetness was visible coming from his eyes and nose.

He was hardly different than Bobbo, Shego figured. Just a fragile psyche toyed about in a sadistic game by a madman. She was hardly any different herself. The only difference between them and her was that Kim was alive, for now. The fear inside her told her that if Kim died, these two men would become mirrors of her inner self.

Pain. Hatred. Fear. Sorrow.

It was what she seemed destined to have, even if she lived through this brief encounter. It wasn't what she wanted though. All she had ever wanted was a white picket fence, two and a half cars, a dog, and a ring shared by a loving spouse. Shego gnashed her teeth.

_Fuck it. That's what I want, that's all I want._

"Die!" The room became an echoing monster of gunshots once more. Blood formed a fine mist as the bullets exploded in a _pop_ on each impact, ripping to shreds any bit of the humanity there was that had been shared by the two brothers. Castor's body was a disgusting mess of blood, bone, and guts being tattered and ripped from his back until all that stood between Shego and death was a thin layer of bullet proof armor, nothing that could stand up to his brother's firepower.

_I thought I could leave her well enough alone, but I can't. I thought I could get her out of my mind just once, but I can't. I ain't leaving here until I've had my chance to say my piece-_

Her thoughts came out as words as she pushed away the bloody slop she'd been cowering behind and stood, a new look of determination crossing her face; "And you can't stop me!"

_**BAM- BAM- BAM-**_

She didn't stop to glance back at Bobbo, standing in the doorway. There was only the brief glance at the twin, looking down at the two bullets wedged in the fiber that covered his chest, then at the bullet-hole in the glass behind him. It was no bigger than her fist, but the cracks it made spider-webbed for feet in every direction.

There was no real thought in her plan, just the sudden impulse that drove her into a three-limbed scramble. By the time the boy had looked up, she'd already driven her full weight into him, and the two were sent sprawling back. The window shattered in a brilliant display of lights, exploding out around their bodies as they disappeared into the night.

Bobbo rested against the wall behind him for a second. Wind rushed through the room even as the glass clattered to a stop; but looking didn't change anything. Looking didn't make the ugly pit in his stomach heal or these pawns kill themselves.

With gritted teeth he pushed himself off again, holding the ugly old handgun up in one hand and his bleeding gut in the other. The shots may not have stopped him, but he was definitely feeling the bruises that formed in fist-sized lumps around them. He was slowing, but the look on his face told clearly that he would not slow before he had his revenge.

He drug his lumbering form across the office. Everything beyond this was naturally secure behind half a dozen electric locks, not that he hadn't been here before. It was something like a second entrance leading to the director's personal elevator, more junk the ever-corrupt Bronson had installed upon weaseling his way in. As soon as he pushed through those double doors, Bobbo knew he would find a large marble room with heavy pillars forming a box around the first floor. Stairs would be right across from him leading up, and lavish suites would exit out on every side. It was a tacticians nightmare, but he didn't care.

After all, who would expect him to survive all this?

The man standing on the other side of the door when Bobbo pushed through certain hadn't. He barely had the time to turn his head before he found a high-caliber pistol pointed into his ear. The bullet released with a bang, blood and brains from the faceless goon splattering across the first pillar on his left. The shock of the sound had a dozen faces turned to the door.

Apparently none of them had expected him, not even Kim, held by masked man flanking Bronson on the second floor. The old man in question looked down and cursed.

Another second later, Bobbo had all the targets he needed by then, and the shooting started. He flanked off to the left, firing off a quick few shots into the face of a man on his right. There weren't many on the first floor, just another three or so after the two he already dispatched. Above, the rest had already opened fire, tearing through the marble around him.

Kim twisted in the man's hold. She hated the feeling of hopelessness, hated it with a passion on par with killing. But even her strength didn't mean jack against super soldiers when her arms were hefted up so high she could feel her shoulder blades.

She couldn't do anything but watch as the darkness was peppered with the bright spray of muzzle fire and the walls and floors were torn into clouds of hot rubble that clouded the air. Bobbo had run just barely fast enough for the first round, blood splashing from a few grazes and a dozen debris wounds. A lucky shot had tagged a soldier in the shoulder, blowing apart bone and ripping through the flesh.

"Stop!" Kim screamed, struggling against her captors. Her eyes were on all the wounded, Bobbo and the soldiers. Even for what they were doing she couldn't let them die like this. "Don't do this! Robert!"

"It's too late for that, Kim!" The big man shouted back. The soldiers were moving around them, trying for a better vantage point. One on the first floor ventured too far and dropped after a bullet tore through his helmet. Kim gagged and looked away, tears burning in her eyes. "They did this! You hear me, Bronson? You want a piece of ol' Bobbo?"

The man had spent the time reloading with his shaky hands, finding his spare clip, his last clip, and shoving it into the large pistol that fit easily in his calloused hands. The pain was getting to him but he wouldn't let himself stop.

"Well?" He shouted, willing up all his power to spring around the corner. There was only one more on the first floor that fell under his precision aim in the next several seconds, a miscalculation on his part. More bullets rained from the sky and Kim struggled once more as she heard him let loose a pained grunt and roll behind the next pillar.

Their helmets were too dark, she guessed. Fancy goggles with zoom and different views created a distortion that made even Bobbo hard to hit accurately, and Bronson was fuming at it.

"Who's the fat man now?" She heard, yelled at the top of his lungs. Another shut rung off and another man dropped, one who had flanked enough on the second floor to be opposite Bobbo's pillar.

"Someone kill him!"

Kim swallowed her pain. Oddly to her handler, she was relaxing in his grip and looking away. Many would have thought the expression on her face, pained and to the point of tears, was her way of admitting defeat. Only Shego would have known she was nearly to the snapping point.

**On that topic…**

A hand swung over the side and crushed back down, hardly getting the elbow over too. It seemed to be taking its entire strength just to hold itself up, but seconds later it was followed by a shoulder, then another hand joined in with more shards of glass crunching underneath

Finally, Shego hefted herself up and over, bowling over the last few jagged pieces of window on her way in and grinding the broken glass across the floor. She gave herself a few moments to breath, a few precious moments she hadn't had in what seemed like forever.

"Goddamn!" She cursed to the sky, letting her head loll to the skyline for a second. The wind was a godsend on her feverish skin, chilling the sweat that clung to her face. It also reminded her of the twin that had disappeared into the lights beneath her. Even if he was her opponent, she felt like giving him a moment of silence, she'd never meant for that to happen, any of that.

The moment of silence was quickly ended when gunshots came from further in the building. A lot of them, mostly automatic weapons.

"Looks like I'm missing the fireworks," Shego moaned, pushing herself into a sitting position. "Can't be too late or my wife will bitch." She finished, laughing somberly.

"As for you…" One of her hands slipped down her leg, reaching the tender and swollen wound that circled a bullet hidden beneath her skin. She took a few calming breaths as her fingers pushed down and in, splitting the skin open a bit wider and taking tender care around the tendons that had already been tenderized. "I don't-" She hissed in pain.

After another few seconds the bullet dropped to the ground in a pool of blood and glass and a light green glow surrounded her finger and wound.

"- take passengers."

She somehow managed to pull herself all the way to the door, walking a little easier without the painful piece of lead in her leg. That didn't mean she was good, but she did notice the glow returning as well.

"Better not try to kill me this time," She hissed at the flames licking her fingers.

The gunfight was still going on, but it was now or never, she figured. The door pushed to the side, slowly at first, then a bit faster when she got the hang of things.

The room had once been impressive, but now chunks of the walls, floor, and pillars were missing. It looked like marble cheese, or as if someone was taking bites out of it. What was more important to her was that there were a good half a dozen goons sitting in a nice orderly formation on the stairs opening fire on a pillar that didn't have much left to it anymore. A jackhammer couldn't have done a better job on the thing.

No one noticed her sneak into the room and size up the competition, not even the two standing guard at the top- Bronson and the yet un-exposed super soldier. One thing they did notice was when a ball of plasma the size of a basket ball shot off into the midst of their goons. It launched like a cannon with none of the noise, just the crackling pop of heat before the explosion.

Shego was a master of much, including her signature green flames. The instantaneous reaction was apparent, the explosion kicking dust and smoke across the room with smoldering hot debris. After it settled it was clear that there were many fewer men standing in the room than there were.

"Sh-Shego?" Bronson raged from the second floor. "Why can they never kill you?"

Shego slid into the safety of a pillar, looking about quickly to see what was left. Kim and her guard were on the second floor, Kim looking a bit dizzy again likely from another blow to the head. Bronson was near them, and near what looked to be an elevator, and a dozen men lay scattered near the destroyed stairs beneath him. Bronson was still on guard after that attack, but the man holding Kim didn't look phased. The last apparent player was behind the demolished pillar. She could see Bobbo's feet sticking out and a pool of blood surrounding him, but it was pretty clear that he was lost.

"Come on, just take a look at that girl beside you. If you think a couple of goons and a bullet can hurt as bad a she can, you've got another thing coming, doy."

That drew his attention away for a moment, but he wasn't stupid enough to stick around and play hostage-taker with Shego in the room. "Use Possible and kill them both, understood?" He called to his lackey before quickly disappearing backwards. The elevator, it seemed, was powered internally.

Quietly Shego made her way around, back across the doorway and the demolished terrain that Bobbo had taken. She knew it was a long shot, but couldn't help but check.

What she found was quite surprising. He was apparently alive, and held a gun towards her head. The heavy, blood-stained pistol she'd given him earlier.

She froze, a stupid thing to do, but she couldn't help it. _**Bang!**_

Something collapsed behind her, and Shego breathed a sigh of relief. The gun in his hands clicked empty on the second shot, but she was quite positive whatever had been sneaking up behind her was dead. Judging by the bodies that littered everywhere, the big man was an incredible shot.

_There were three downstairs,_ Bobbo thought. "You want a piece of ol' Bobbo?" He coughed aloud, followed by a harsh laugh that ended when his body was wracked with more, harsher, wet coughs. Blood stained his grizzled maw. He may have been alive, but for how much longer, Shego wasn't sure, and a good part of her didn't care. She was here for her wife, after all.

"You can have-" More coughs sounded, "- him, and you can say hi to Frankie and all your other friends after." It was apparent he wasn't talking to her. She wasn't even sure if he could even see her anymore.

His fingers were shaking when he reached into his pocket, producing a bent and slightly bloodied cigarette. He couldn't manage to lift it to his face though, and his face was growing paler by the second. There was no telling how many shots he'd taken, and his eyes were drifting closed bit by bit.

Shego leaned down at his side, still wary of the man upstairs with Kim. She lifted the cigarette silently, placing it in his lips and lighting it with the flames in her fingers. She didn't say anything, but he managed to nod in appreciation, clutching one of her wrists with the last drops of his strength.

"You save that bitch," He looked up at her tiredly, "Don't let this all be for nothing."

She didn't bother to nod, he was dead already. Instead she turned and slowly made her way around the pillar. The man was still up there, but he had made no move to make good on Bronson's orders.

"And just who are you supposed to be?" Shego snorted. "The final boss?"

The man released his hold on Kim's wrists. Shego had to do all she could just to stop from rushing to catch her as she collapsed to the marble at her feet, barely keeping herself from cracking her head open. She wasn't looking forward to traversing the destroyed staircase though.

"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."

**Halftime - A while ago…**

It was summer in Go, and the civilians were flocking to the beaches to enjoy the sea breeze. That didn't mean criminals were too, as they'd quickly proven within the last several weeks. In fact, crime seemed to rise as the heat wave dragged on. Shego blamed it on need for air conditioners or heat boiling their brains.

But her brothers didn't see it her way, they never did. She was getting better at avoiding their thoughts, but they were getting more and more insistent with the increasing crimes. If it didn't make Hego so happy, she wouldn't have bothered holding the team together half as long as she had.

She was getting tired though. There was no longer any reason for her to keep fighting, to keep wearing herself out through school and crime-fighting for people who didn't give a rat's ass about her feelings, brothers included.

What Hego suggested next didn't help matters. In fact, she opposed vehemently, wheeling on him before they even got in the door to press a glowing finger to his throat.

"Calm down, sister, there's no need to take the news that harshly," He insisted.

"No need?" She practically screamed back. "I do not need a handler! I'm not some fucking dog to be lead around on a fucking leash!"

"Shego, language!" At least she'd gotten him to say her name, rather than some derogatory title for her.

Seething in anger, Shego had turned back and entered the tower lounge, ignoring Mego and his call for help with the twins. She kept that way until she reached her door at the end, painted an ugly green and black, and found two people standing before it.

"Hi, we're your dog walkers," The man of the pair said in greeting, holding out a hand, "I'm Gideon."

She ignored him completely, eyes locked on the brunette standing almost timidly behind him, eyes wide as they looked into Shego's own. "Well, hello," Shego drawled sweetly. "Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."

The brunette didn't seem to get the reference, but she smiled coyly back all the same, extending a demure hand. "The name is…"

**And we're back…**

"G..." The look of shock on Shego's face was priceless. It shouldn't have shocked her though, back in the late part of her hero career and through college, she'd gotten to know her handlers well enough. Gideon had always said how power was the only way to accomplish anything, agreeing with Shego's ideals at the end of her heroics, but disagreeing with the third part of their little triumvirate.

"S…" He sounded tired. Underneath his helmet, unknown to the villainess, he looked tired. For the past day he'd been growing steadily more disconnected from his job, more detached from the principles the wily Carter had hammered into him.

This all just seemed wrong. He didn't know what to do.

"So," Shego started, "This is it? This is where our ideals have taken us?"

"It takes power to change the world," Gideon replied.

Shego scowled and nearly looked away. She might have if the man hadn't been pulling his sidearm from his holster. "And power corrupts."

"Maybe she was right…"

"She always was the best of us."

Kim moaned, slowly pushing herself off the cold floor. In the short course of her most recent capture she'd been pistol whipped by Bronson no less than four times, and it was giving her even more of a killer headache. Nothing compared to what Shego was feeling, she reminded herself as she looked over her wife at the bottom of the stairs.

Slowly her head turned up to where her captor was standing with a gun, apparently having forgotten her. Killing was unforgivable, but killing her wife just would not do.

"Sorry," He called down, beginning the- what seemed like a- painfully slow motion of pulling the trigger to end her life. In that second Shego realized that the man she'd known was dead too, just like Charlie and the twins. If that was what it took to be a super soldier, she pitied where the world was trying to take them.

The sound that came out was something like a gun firing, but it was definitely no pistol. It was just as fast and much stronger though.

The gun fell from Gideon's loose hand, hitting the ground in a painfully loud clatter to the suddenly quiet room. His hands went down to his gut, where Kim's fist had buried itself in his armor well past her thumb. Just as he was about to turn to deal with the girl Shego launched into action, taking the railing of the stairs as fast as she could rather than the destroyed staircase itself. She managed astonishingly well for someone hiding a bad limp. As she reached the top she even managed a quick flip, bringing the heel of her boots down on the helmet of her old friend, shattering half the bulletproof construct in a single kick and sending him to the floor while she tumbled down beside him.

He tried to push himself to his feet but only made it to his knees. Blood was dripping from his lips and his breath was coming in short gasps. Kim's single punch had done more than a gun probably could, save for the illegal rounds the modified soldiers carried with them. Kim knew as much, or at least knew that he was no longer a threat, instead letting her regard the carnage for a second, before turning.

"You okay, Princess?" Shego called behind her, just as Kim caught her eyes and went to help her up.

Taking another look around the destruction that surrounded them, Kim muttered a quick; "No."

Shego glanced back for a second, catching Kim's darker green eyes with her own brighter ones. She flashed a weary smile, a small act that seemed to cheer the heroine up considerably. "You'll be fine. Think you can pry open that elevator shaft for us?" She wasn't stupid enough to think Kim would leave her alone with an enemy after everything that had happened, but she needed a talk with her old friend, who was being conspicuously silent besides the occasional rasp of breath.

Kim nodded and headed across the room to where Bronson had disappeared. She didn't have the lack of strength Shego was feeling at the moment, and started on the heavy emergency doors without fail.

"To think," Gideon muttered when she was out of earshot, "Killed by the person I was supposed to become." Another cough sent more blood to his lips.

"Cracked your ribs into your lungs, didn't she?" Shego asked with an oddly jovial I-told-you-so manner. He only nodded in reply, spitting more blood when that proved to painful for him.

"All this time spent trying to be more powerful- to make a difference, and it's nothing compared to the fist of a cheerleader."

"She is something special. You know why I called her off?" He shook his head. "Because I can't let her kill you. It would ruin her if she learned she went overboard on a single punch."

He looked up, then off to the side. At the end of the marble room was another of the tall windows Bronson so enjoyed, one that showed the hint of dawn stretching over the skyline of Pacific. It was oddly beautiful, despite the death that surrounded it, and the bullet holes that marred the picturesque view, cracking the window down numerous ways.

Having finally managed to pry open the heavy doors, which had nearly refused to budge no matter how much she worked on them, a sound caught her attention and Kim turned back to Shego only to gasp. The man was no where in sight, and Shego was looking out over the lightening sky with a lost look she couldn't quite pin down. A hole in the window clearly told her what happened, though whether Shego had moved him or he had done it himself was another question.

"Shego?"

"Yeah, Kimmie, let's get out of here."

"Shego… Thank you."

"You owe me, Princess."

**A short moment later…**

Resting against Kim's chest as they slid down fifty-some levels using a jury-rigged piece of armor was oddly comforting. Shego almost felt her eyelids drooping closed, despite the rush of falling so far and so fast. She had almost forgotten how unnaturally strong Kim was, being able to control their descent and hold her up, all while keeping them away from the tense and painful-looking cable.

Powerful, in control, and comfortable. This was how Kim was supposed to be, not lost just because things were looking mixed up.

"Kim?"

"Hmm?" The girl looked back from whatever she had been looking at, her wide and adorable eyes already bringing a small smile to Shego's face.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Suddenly Kim was awfully interested in the wall again. "I don't mean to blame you. Bronson- this guy is a horrible excuse for a human being. But you could've had these guys in two hits and been back by dinner."

"I know…" Kim's voice was hard to hear over the whistling of their fall. "I know, I just didn't know what to do. They…"

"What? They what?"

"Incoming." Shego hardly had time to look down before Kim tightened the vest that was wrapped around the cable, squeezing it harder and harder until they slowed, bit by bit. By the time they hit the top of the elevator it wasn't anything for Kim to worry about, though her shoes were melted from the way she'd been keeping them away from the cable.

A single kick was enough to open the roof of the elevator. There was no one inside, but it hadn't been stopped long. It had been moving still when they were just a dozen floors away. Kim moved first. Ever since she'd seen Shego at gunpoint she'd been being careful around her, trying to keep her as far from danger as possible, though with Shego that looked just about impossible. The same could be said about Kim, but Shego was tired and not against a bit of babying for now.

After Kim helped Shego down, they exited into a short hallway and then the lobby. Bronson was inside, Kim and Shego were quiet enough not to get noticed, but the street was full of lights. Lots and lots of lights.

"Global Justice?" Kim whispered back to Shego, who shook her head.

"The army," She replied, nodding towards the one visible vehicle behind the floodlights, a camouflage colored transport truck.

Bronson, apparently, had been messing with a cell phone, letting off numerous gruff curses and growls. Whoever he was trying to call wasn't answering, and Shego could bet that a little phone pasted across the pavement outside near a corpse was fizzling right now in anticipation. With his backup wasted, he growled and checked behind him, unholstering his gun for support. He couldn't be too cautious for the woman who'd survived this much hell just to make it this far and the infamous Kim Possible.

Feeling a bit safer he headed for the lighted doors. Kim saw her last adversary getting away and moved to stop him before Shego caught her around the waist and pulled her back.

"He's getting away," Kim hissed. Suddenly she felt a pair of hands over her eyes.

"No, he's running out towards the American military holding a gun. There's a big difference, Princess."

In the silence of the evacuated lobby she could hear the door swing open. She could hear the chatter of the military outside for that brief moment. She could hear someone call out; "Gun!" And then she could hear a hundred bullets flying through the excuses of an old man and right into the windows of the building.

"I'm sorry, Kim." Shego whispered into her neck until it was over. "Not even you can save everyone."

"Today, I couldn't save anyone." She didn't sound that sad, but Shego could feel tears against the dried blood on her hands.

"You saved me."

Leaning down, she rested into the back of her wife. The two were huddled behind the counter, protected against the flurry of bullets from before, and Shego moved to wrap her arms around Kim's stomach in a lasting hug. Even for the cheerleader this just felt good, it felt right. After all that had happened to her, she needed this moment.

Their moment was nearly broken when a small squad of soldiers dressed in dark army camouflage, special forces if Shego wasn't mistaken, came through, crunching across the broken glass but silent otherwise. Their guns were up, lights on, and trained at any movement that might have shown up.

One passed right beside their little embrace, glancing over the two battered woman only briefly. Shego could have sworn she saw the shadow of a handlebar mustache underneath the baklava he was wearing, but just like that the soldier was gone, off to search more of the building, leaving the two to their peace.

It seemed to take forever for either of the girls to feel like standing. Shego was the first, pushing herself up onto her sore legs. The bullet wound was slowly healing thanks to her powers, but she still felt like shit. Nevertheless, she helped her wife to her feet and wrapped a protective hand around her shoulder as the two slowly headed outside. If anyone was surprised that Shego was there, no one mentioned it. Outside the protective line of cops, SWAT, and soldiers moved collectively forward to collect the two women, both of whom noticed the tarp draped over a suspicious bleeding lump on the stairs outside the building.

Taking one look at Kim, regardless of Shego, the two were shuttled further outside to where the paramedics waited. They were split up against their silent protests, and an hour went by as the sky lightened and more and more men were brought in. They could count the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, SWAT, and half a dozen international agencies, as well as Global Justice's own Betty Director, who looked tired and thankfully hadn't noticed either of the girls. It was a godsend to both of them when they wandered too far after being released by the paramedics, ending up at the empty public barricade where a SUV was waiting.

"You two look like you need a ride," Commented Monique while rolling the window down. She quickly found herself crushed under the weight of Kim's hug.

"Alright, Princess, let her breath." Shego said, prying her off her friend. Monique gave her an appreciative smile, mirrored by Chris who was sitting in the driver's seat. "Nice jacket, Macguyver." She snorted, motioning towards the bare legs that were showing underneath a work blazer.

"Oh yeah," Chris chuckled, "It's a new fashion here. Picked up a present for you and your wife too." One arm was produced with a pair of handcuffs jingling about underneath.

"Kinky." Shego drawled. Kim blushed.

Monique looked at the two, then behind them; "They gonna' let you leave, girl?"

"Only if they don't find us first." Shego responded, opening the back door of the pilfered SUV. "M'lady."

Kim took the pleasantries in stride. She could never tell when Shego was joking or genuinely trying to impress her. "I've got to agree. I've done enough without a week-long interrogation."

"Then it's settled. Driver, Middleton please, and step on it."

"Screw Middleton," Monique retorted, "Find us a motel. Something with a separate room for the lovebirds."

Kim didn't mention anything about their newest pet name, but she did add her opinion; "How about a breakfast place? I'm starving."

**Across from them…**

Betty didn't notice the nondescript SUV pulling away, she was at the other end of the building surveying the damage. It looked terrible, as much for their reputation as the lives lost. She wasn't dense, and knew GJ would be ruined for this.

She also knew a lot of people would be too. Most the dead turning up were salary men who didn't have many ties to the organization. Some of the dead shouldn't have even been there.

Surveying the damages also included getting a look at the casualties, like the one who had splattered across the concrete after a lengthy drop. She turned away with a sigh, letting the cover drop back of what remained of the corpse's face.

"_The name is Betty,"_ She said, grasping Shego's hand several minutes too long. Their eyes remained affixed on each other, lighted by soft smiles and bashful looks. A silent conversation between the new acquaintances.

"Great," Gideon mumbled behind them, "I knew some people didn't like my flirting, but I didn't think they'd go this far."

"Shut up," Shego hissed behind her, before snapping her smile back towards Betty like nothing had happened.

"Figures, you just have to be one of those femme-Nazis too." Shego didn't even have to react, Betty had already clamped her heel down on the unfortunate agent's foot.

"I'm not a femme-Nazi, I'm just allergic to stupidity." She retorted after another flirtatious smile towards Betty.

"I was expecting all of you to be as stuck-up as your brothers," Betty commented, "You actually seem like a refreshing twist."

"Thank you." Shego replied kindly. Her entire demeanor seemed to have changed around this girl in a millisecond, but no one seemed to mind. "Everyone around here has the justice stick up their asses, we should go find someplace that doesn't."

Betty nodded and smiled in encouragement, allowing herself to be lead towards the lobby doors by the beautiful teen before her. Shego stopped just before they exited, holding up a finger to signify her need for a moment alone.

She quickly found her older brother, wrapping her arms most the way around his enormous frame. He practically shot up in surprise when she hugged him. "I take it all back. Thank you- Thank you, you bought me a lesbian! It's just what I always wanted."

Betty found herself giggling at the sense of humor the teen had, her warm smile spreading up to her eyes as she viewed her. In her youth, she foolishly dreamed that the two might have a future together, that one day she'd look back on this moment and smile.

That one day arrived, but there was no smile, just a tear dripping out from under her eye patch.

"Damn it, Gideon… I warned you."


End file.
